Wild goose chase ends in success

 A goose named Chicken led a group of Glendale residents on a merry chase Tuesday.

The chase began when Robin Fisher sent out the call for residents, and organized a rescue operation to capture a Canada goose that suffers from angel wing, says Steve Hardaker, one of the neighbours who offered to help.

The syndrome prevents the bird from flying, he says, and Fisher intended to catch it and transport it to the Open Sky Raptor Foundation in Grimsby,  where it will live out the rest of its life, he says — birds don’t recover from angel wing.

The rescue group first saw it by the storm water treatment pond at the corner of Taylor Road and Glendale Avenue, but by the time they captured it, they were behind White Oaks Resort and Spa.

“I threw the blanket on him three times, and he still ran,” said Fisher. “It was Alison and Tammy that finally got him down. He was so tired he just gave up. Alison was the one who picked him up and put him in the cage. It went so well.”

The reason his saviours dubbed him Chicken? “He initially fled from us, playing chicken and twice crossing Glendale and then Taylor,” says Hardaker. “Fitting name.”

Angel wing is a syndrome that affects primarily aquatic birds, such as geese and ducks, in which the last joint of the wing is twisted, with the wing feathers pointing out laterally, instead of lying against the body, is Wikipedia’s description of Chicken’s deformity.

It is caused by a high-calorie diet, often, when they live near humans, and fed a steady diet of bread.