Last school year, many Mayfield faculty members worked together to help a group of geese escape the Library Media Center courtyard and brought them to the outside world.

The reason this took place was that a pair of geese named Gertrude and Igor made their nest in the LMC Courtyard and hatched their children Huey, Dewie, and Louie. They loitered inside the courtyard, eating grass and drinking the clean water provided to them from a small pool.

Geese have been coming for a few years now every spring and staying in the courtyard, with their nest located along the bend in the stone wall. The year before last, no eggs hatched as it was the library’s first year being in that location, and the teachers didn’t know how to handle the situation correctly at the time. However, three of five eggs hatched during the past school year’s episode.

However, a problem soon arose. The baby geese needed to learn how to swim in a larger body of water soon after birth so they could learn to swim properly. This resulted in some members of the Mayfield staff working to free the birds from their walled off prison.

“We were concerned, and there were a lot of children concerned about the little goslings,” said librarian Liz Lentz, an active participant in the freeing of the geese.

The teachers needed to bring the geese out as a family to make sure they would find each other, so the teachers had to bring them through the school itself.

The decided route took them through the south side doors of the courtyard to the back doors of the school. Phys ed teacher Rebecca Finotti provided exercise mats from the gym which they used to barricade the other hallways, forcing the geese forward through the doors, with cracked corn placed at points to help lead them forward.

After the Geese started down the hall, Lentz and math teacher Bob Gynn took the mats and used them to push the geese forward to freedom. In the end, the geese never felt stressed or did any hissing.

“No feathers were ruffled!” Lentz said.