Geese

Our gander has lost the lead in his pencil. After two or three years of more (and often less) successful reproduction, all the eggs the goose is laying remain unfertile, and friends are peeved at the absence of their Christmas goose. The pair must be seven years old by now, but as they live for about thirty years, I don't see any reason for this sad state of affairs. After a fox scared the goose off her nest last year and she refused to sit as a potential self sacrifice on the offchance of hatching the eggs herself, investment was made into an incubator but still no joy. She keeps squirting out those eggs every other day in an ever hopeful fashion and I hate to disabuse her. The hunt is now on for some fertile eggs, but my small ads research is failing to bear fruit.