A reporter's wild goose chase ends

One of the Tribune's longest-suffering and most inconsequential investigations has come to an appropriately frivolous end.

One of these things is not like the others.

Ever since we ran a photo of the County Road and Bridge Department performing some Bitter Creek culvert repair on Lane 7 last month, I've been trying to learn what a plastic goose was doing at the scene.

On the north side of the road, a faceless goose decoy had been strategically placed alongside the roadside cones warning oncoming travelers of the narrowed roadway.

I'd originally hypothesized the fake gander was some inventive technique to, say, keep road-undermining varmints away from the construction site. But Road and Bridge brass quickly kiboshed my bird-brained notion that it was there per department policy.

"We don't stockpile geese cones," said an amused County Project Manager Mike Collier a couple weeks back. Collier helpfully added that the set of national engineering standards used by the county "doesn't say anything about reflective geese."

The decoy stoically supervised the arrival of soil to the project.

Tonight, however, Powell Road and Bridge employee Clarence Anderson confirmed the goose was placed on the road not for any practical reason, but as a practical joke. The decoy was apparently found bobbing in Bitter Creek and the crew working on the road and culvert placed it alongside the cones for a laugh.

The goose has since taken up residence at the pond outside the Powell Road and Bridge Shop on Lane 9 West.

"I think it's still floating out there," Anderson said. "I think."