Caution: Geese Nesting

I drive up to the roof of the parking structure.  It's a Monday and finally a nice day in March.  We've had a horrible winter and I want to enjoy as much of the outdoors as I can.  Even if it's only as I walk into the office building in the morning and out in the evening. 

But I am greeted by beady eyes.  Black.  Soulless.  The small head pivots as I drive by the median in the middle of the parking lot: it’s new perch.  It’s watching me.

I watch back as I gather my bags from the safety of my car.  Keeping it’s gaze, I slide out of my vehicle.  The connection is broken as I walk around my car.  It’s not that far to the glass door of the stairwell. 

I walk out into the open of the rooftop parking.  Making a break for the stairs.  But I don’t run.  What if it gets spooked?  What if it flies at me, beating those gray wings the pointed black beak aiming for my face? 

Don’t geese attack people?  The thought pounds in my head.

But we just stare.  I reach the door and safety.  The stairwell is enclosed by glass paneling.  I won’t see open air until I’m down a level on the ground ready to cross the street to my office building.  And the goose won’t see me.  As long as he doesn’t move.  And he doesn’t.

Monday Evening

It has been another day at work, and I forgot about the staring contest from the morning until I step outside again. 

Surely he’s not still there.  Surely. 

I am sure when I am inside the glass of the stairwell on the roof.  No goose.

Driving to the gym, which is in another office building in the corporate park where I work, I forget again. 

I decide to go for a jog outside today.  It’s still beautiful outside and after how cold it’s been, I’m longing to be outside. 

I’ve never run the trails that connect the handful of offices.  Or half-run / half-walk as I actually do.  It’s intervals.  And I get tired.

I’m walking around the lake easing into a jog as I approach a downward slope.  Okay, maybe I do most of my running downhill.  And I see the sign.  Caution Geese Nesting. With a silhouette of a goose.  In case I had never seen one.

Wouldn’t that have been nice to know eight hours ago.