Summer 2005

The Wild Goose Chase
by T. L. Roe

Dressed in faded jeans and a white Abercombie sweatshirt, I throw on my red cap and toss a few necessities into a big cooler: six bottles of Diet Pepsi, and a pack of peanut butter crackers. It’s three in the morning on Saturday, Feb. 26, 2005. Grumpy and half asleep, I leave Fowler and head east on Highway 50 with the intentions of making the Sunrise Tour at the Third Annual High Plains Snow Goose Festival in Lamar.

Co-hosted by the City of Lamar and the Colorado Division of Wildlife, the weekend-long festival is held during the optimum time for migratory birds: April 30 through May 7. The snow geese that bird watchers come to Prowers County to see are considered the most abundant goose in the world. Wildlife biologists estimate that there are at least 6 million North. Weighing five to six pounds, the big geese spend their winters in southeastern Colorado, New Mexico, northern Mexico, and the Texas panhandle. In late spring, they form enormous flocks and head back to their summer nesting grounds in the Canadian Arctic.

The sun begins to rise as I enter Las Animas. Three miles down the highway, something catches my eye and I turn my head to the left to see two bald eagles perched in a tree. I make a U-turn and come back, but when I pull up beside the tree, the large birds with snow-white heads and dark brown bodies fly away and leave me cussing for being denied a great photographic experience.

Not sure if I am supposed to go to the Lamar High School or to another destination, I stop at a Loaf-n-Jug where horse-head lighters and bronc-buster hat pins are displayed across the front counter. When I ask where I should go, two friendly women attendants tell me they aren’t sure, but will call the Cow Palace Hotel and ask them. The hotel decides that I should go to the John Martin Reservoir. Getting back in my car, I realize that I must now backtrack twenty miles to the entrance sign that I passed on the way in.

I pull into the welcome center when I get to the reservoir, and go in to ask if there is a charge to drive through. I tell the two clean-cut, male rangers that I am writing an article on the goose festival and need to locate the tour buses. One of them asks me where I am going, and when I reply that I don’t know where I’m going, both rangers burst out laughing and say that since I’m the “Press” I don’t have to pay to get in. But after a fifteen minute drive through the reservoir without seeing a tour bus, a person, or even a bird, I realize that I should have gone to the high school and leave the park knowing that in the welcome center the “dumb blonde” jokes are being circulated with a gusto.

Back in Lamar, I locate the high school and see the “Welcome Bird Watchers” sign; I’m finally where I should be. Inside, I am greeted by Lamar Chamber of Commerce Manager Shana Reed, a petite woman with short, brown hair, who hurriedly tells me that I can catch up with the Sunrise Tour.

“This time go to the Queens State Wildlife Area, north on Highway 287 in Kiowa County,” says Reed, as she crams a map into my hands and pushes me out the door.

Another twenty miles and I reach the 4,426 acre marshland reserve that is home to numerous species of Colorado wildlife. Feeling like I am on an African safari, I take in the beauty of the high plains park while driving another five miles over bumpy, dusty dirt roads until I see the tour buses.

Fogged Out

But it’s bad news for me and the one hundred-or-so bird watchers: there is too much morning fog to see the geese, and we’ll have to wait for the Sunset Tour at 3:30 to try again. Driving back to the high school, I pass the time by watching ring-necked pheasants, red-tail hawks, and searching for a possible flock of snow geese.

Snow geese are categorized by two different color phases. In the white phase, the geese are a brilliant white except for black wing tips. In the second phase (blue geese phase), the geese turn a slate gray color while maintaining a white head. A dark “grinning patch” on the sides of the bill remains predominant during both phases.

Although snow geese are the theme of the Lamar festival; the heart of the event really takes place at the high school where the Nature Art and Craft Fair and presentations on topics such as falconry and rock art are offered throughout the weekend.

An array of booths are set up in the school auditorium, where wildlife experts and craft venders are knowledgeable about everything from skunk seasons to seashell birdhouses. At the Colorado Division of Wildlife booth John Koshak is sitting behind a booth with his wife, Su, and daughter Gina. When I stop in front of the booth, Koshak grabs two huge goose wings from the table, puts one on each side of his head, and flaps them up and down as if he is some sort of mentally challenged, alien bird. When I tell him that the wings go great with his salt-and-pepper beard and red flannel shirt, he beams as if pleased that his attempts at humor are loosening up the visitors.

“We’re a happy group of goose-people this year,” Koshak says, but then grows serious when the conversation turns to how the festival is really about the craft fair and raising money for non-profit organizations. “We really need more nature vendors, and more exposure for the ones who take the time to participate every year. We were big last year,” he continues, “but we need more people to get involved with nature.”

At the T-shirt booth, third-year committee volunteers Kathy Wooten and Shirley Pampus don beige and green festival caps, pose for my camera, and then expertly talk me into forking over $10 for a cap.

After buying a Mary Engelbert pot holder for my mom, and donating five dollars for the Lamar Soup Kitchen, I make my way to the school’s lobby in time to watch the Lewis and Clark Expedition presentation given by John Martin Reservoir Park Ranger Don Headlee. Headlee, 67, dressed in a reproduction 1804 uniform, tells the large crowd of people that the expedition, which occurred two hundred years ago, was responsible for identifying 122 new species and subspecies of vertebrate animals and 227 specimens of plants.

I want to get a photo of him. Just as Headlee turns in my direction and I prepare to snap the frame, a fiery, red headed 5-year-old dressed in a black cowboy outfit, breaks free from his mother’s grasp, bolts up the aisle and slams into my back, causing my face to smash into the metal seating area of the table on my right. I hear my camera clatter loudly to the cement floor, but my eyes are on Headlee who has stopped speaking and is reaching to pick up something that has skittered across the floor to the tips of his spit-polished expeditionary boots. My mouth fills with blood as he bends and picks up the front tooth that has been knocked from my mouth.

Seemingly fascinated, he studies my tooth for a minute, then walks over to me.
“I believe you dropped this, Ma’m,” he politely states, and bends down to hand me my tooth. Before I am fully aware of what has just transpired, I am being whisked off to the bathroom while murmurs of “Oh no, it’s the Press” pass through the crowd.

After a kind bunch of sturdy-looking local women have done all they can for my mouth, I find out that there is a break between scheduled events. So, like any devoted reporter would do, I stuff my tooth in my front pocket and head out to see what other interesting things Lamar has to offer besides the festival and the bratty bandit who shot me down in cold blood.

At Lamar Community College, young men and women in full rodeo regalia are practicing roping skills and riding their horses across the school grounds. I stop to admire the well-crafted bronze statue of two flying snow geese, and then move on to the town’s retail center on Main Street to find the antique store that I had spied from the street on my way in.
I walk into Grandpa’s Attic prepared to dicker over the price of the broken toy Popeye I have my eye on in the front window, figuring that the scary blood on my shirt and hideous, toothless grin might work to my advantage.

“It’s a rare piece,” kind-faced, overweight Grandpa whispers conspiratorially into my ear, while completely ignoring my shirt and gapping mouth as if it’s an everyday event to get your teeth knocked out in Lamar. “If he had limbs I’d be selling him for $800, but for a sweet out-of-towner like you, I’ll let him go leg-less for $400.” I leave the store without the paraplegic Popeye and head back to the high school in time for the Birds of Prey presentation.

Naturalist Jenny Spears, who runs the aviary at the Pueblo Nature Center, brushes a long, blonde strand of hair from her blue eyes before reaching in an animal carrier and producing a red-tail hawk. Spears begins by telling us that hawks can live up to thirty years in captivity, but usually only survive for one to three years in the wild.

“There’s just not enough food in the winter,” she says, before putting squawky Jed away and bringing out Skyler, a beautiful white, female barn owl who is either catatonic or is experiencing jet lag from her 120-mile road trip in a plastic box.

I had already been told that the Sunset Tour was filled to capacity by 8:00 that morning, and riding on a bus was not an option. “But since you’re the Press and got your tooth knocked out,” assistant tour guide Debby Bolt tells me, “you get to follow in your car free-of-charge.” I was back in the saddle again, and not the only one racing out to my vehicle to start forming a line: with 23 cars and 4 buses, we resembled a wagon train of modern-day settlers headed out to conquer the West.

At Queens Reservoir, north of Lamar, we watch from our vehicles while red-tailed hawks, who are perched on telephone poles, scour the prairie below for possible dining companions that have whiskers and squeak. We stop at a tree that has six huge, condominium-style nests in it, and I am thrilled when I see my third bald eagle of the day peeking out from the penthouse suite. Our mile-long caravan waits patiently while a young man with spiked hair and bookworm glasses jumps out of his car and sets up his tripod and camera to photograph the eagle. But when five minutes pass and he still hasn’t figured out how to take the picture, a sweaty man three cars behind me, jumps out of his SUV and runs over to show the kid how to work his own camera equipment so that we can get moving again.

We cross intersecting roads and are greeted with a big wave from tour guide Kevin Kaczmarek, 32, of the Colorado Division of Wildlife, who we will follow to our first destination. Dressed in Red Wing hiking boots and brown argyle knee-high socks, Kaczmarek makes a big “head ‘em out” motion with his right arm while giving the butt of his khaki shorts a good yank with his left hand before jumping back in his truck and leading us forward.

When we arrive at a well-trodden area surrounding a small lake, everyone races to get their tripods, mega-binoculars, huge telescopes, and all kinds of expensive camera gear out of the vehicles. But instead of searching for places to set up the equipment, they all stop and stare. Like me, they have just noticed where we are - right in the middle of a hunter’s campsite.

Kaczmarek introduces the hunter, who is hurriedly grabbing his barking dogs and depositing them in his Chevy pickup. It’s Miguel from nearby Eads, who stops to take a gulp of his Corona beer before coming forward to shake hands with the foremost bird watchers. When he passes by me, he gives me a big smile, and I am suddenly overcome by the feeling that Miguel is turned-on by my bloody shirt.

Kaczmarek starts to get the hint when no one moves away from the buses. He decides to take us three miles down the road to a spot where the marshes sparkle with crystal blue water, and there are tiny white objects bobbing around out there that might be geese.
Everyone seems excited as they set up their equipment in a huge half circle around Kaczmarek, who has already begun his spiel on snow geese while searching with binoculars for possible candidates. “They fly out to other area waterways during the day,” he says, “then head back here to roost for the night.”

Suddenly, Kaczmarek stops speaking and focuses his binoculars. “There’s one flying our way,” he exclaims to the gasping crowd. Putting his finger to his lips and signaling everyone to be quiet, he points to where he sees the goose.

Intently watching with the rest of the group, I absentmindedly twist the cap slowly off my bottle of Diet Pepsi to take a swig (like all soda pop addicts do in a stressful situation), and when the carbonated drink’s stereotypical hiss shatters the silence, the man directly in front of me jumps in the air and screams “rattlesnake, rattlesnake!”

Forgetting the goose and camera equipment, everyone runs. But the man who screamed stops dead in his tracks as he passes me, and stares down at the opened Pepsi in my hand. “It’s the Press!”

At home, I lie in bed with a killer toothache and wait for the day’s adventure to dissolve into nocturnal oblivion. I am yet to find out that the broken flash on my camera will procure me 29 pitch-black slides, and that if I don’t want to walk around looking like a backwoods hick, I’ll have to pay $1,200 for a fake front tooth. It will be a week before I look the leg-less Popeye up in an antique book and find out that even if he had limbs, he is only worth $80.

Although Grandpa had been running a line on me, I still felt weirdly satisfied with my day of wild goose chasing; of visiting a town where you can cowboy-up and get down to the business of hand-tooled leather fanny packs and saddle sores. A place where convenience store clerks are really quite friendly when they give you bad directions, and a place where you might catch a glimpse of a snow goose looking back over its shoulder as it leaves Lamar for its northern breeding grounds, unsure if it is being hunted or revered.