Hunt Co., TX - News: Report on the Goslings ***************************************************** This file was contributed for use in the USGenWeb by: Sarah Swindell USGenWeb Archives. Copyright. All rights reserved http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm ***************************************************** Report on the Goslings A near disaster was averted Saturday afternoon when fire broke out in the Waitman Floyd building adjacent to the fire station. The locked door was forced and a fire, started from a heater brooder, was quickly put out. Over fifty fluffy yellow goslings lost their lives. (April 27, 1962) Mrs. Lewis continued to report on the goslings in her August 3, 1962 article. Waitman Floyd’s project raising geese to combat the grass in a new land cotton field would have been successful in a big way if a succession of disasters had not hit. The first hundred goslings were growing well when a brooder fire took fifty-six. The rest lived and grew, but were too few. One hundred more grew well in the prepared house at the farm. Along came the flood of rain in early July and twenty-five drowned. (Some said it must have been some rain to drown a goose…it was!) All seemed well, for the remaining one hundred twenty or so loved that grass, worked diligently, and "talked" about their work with heads high in determination. They worked in the moonlight for the days were too hot for a grassy goose dinner in that sun. Last week disaster hit again—varmints or dogs, disregarded the electric fence and filed thirty-eight full-grown, working geese, all in one night. A good try, the remaining eighty or so are fun to watch as the trundle along, single file to new and greener fields away from the beaten path. One poor crippled gander is the only reminder of the original one hundred. (August 3, 1962, The Celeste Courier)