My father had a pond dug, turning a seasonal wet land into a pond, in the far back of our yard. Our yard abutted a woods, so essentially the pond was in the woods.  My older brother then got ducks and geese to go into the pond.   A small flock of Canadian geese.  While this might sound quaint and picturesque, geese are one nasty creature, especially if they are nesting and feel threatened.  They will bite, and they will also attack you with their wings.  When your  a small boy, these can really hurt. Who am I kidding, they also can easily hurt a grown adult.  They also had a way of trying to sneak up on you, and trying to attack you from behind. This required constant attention, when you were in “their territory” working or doing other things. Essentially working in the backyard was like walking in a hostile territory, or like going into a group of bullies everyday.   Of course, we could have just killed the things, except for the fact that they were my brother’s pets.  So that wasn’t really an option.  These geese however taught me a number of lessons. First was how to grab a gooses neck, and wrap up its wings without getting buffeted to bad.  The second was how to deal with bullies. The third was that I loved my brother, because if I didn’t, I would have killed those damn geese.