One day, before mama goose had her family, she was enjoying the little lake in front of her nesting place. She was giggling quite loudly as she splashed the water around, feeling free as a … well…bird. Her beautiful (but Loud!) giggling reached the ears of an Egyptian Goose called Tayar (the flyer). The reason he was called Tayar is because he loved to travel all over the world. He was always flying above and discovering amazing things but, if you ask him what his best discovery was, he will always say, this beautiful Australian Goose and her loud infectious giggle.
Now even though Tayar met a lot of birds on his travels, he was still a very shy goose. He never found it easy to talk to strangers. He was flying above
when he heard this sound that made him feel so happy, like magic! So, he flew down very fast to find where that sound was coming from. He was so nervous and excited! She was so beautiful! He really wanted to talk to her but was too shy. So, he kept telling himself brave words to help him but the one that worked best was: “you’re braver than you feel.”
After a while of making himself braver like this, Tayar finally jumped in the lake and swam slowly towards the pretty lady goose. He timidly said: “mmmhmm!” like he was clearing his throat, but she didn’t hear him. So, he tried again this time a little louder
“MMMMHMMM!”
“Oh!” She responded surprised. “I didn’t see you swimming behind me. Who are you stranger?”
“T..Tayar” Replied Tayar nervously.
“Hello Tayar. My name is Rosey. You’re not from around here are you?”
“N..no I’m not. I flew from Egypt.”
“Ooooh Wow!! I’ve always wanted to fly to Egypt!!” Rosey said excitedly. “I’m just waiting for someone to want to fly with me because I don’t like travelling alone…” Rosey suddenly became quieter as she said that because she was embarrassed to say she was afraid of travelling on her own.
Tayar suddenly felt very brave when he saw that Rosey could also get shy like him, so he did the bravest thing he ever did in his life… he puffed up his chest and asked her “Would you like to fly with me...?”
Rosey’s cheeks went all red but she was so happy to finally find someone who liked travelling as much as she did, so she said “Yes”.
After that Tayar and Rosey were always travelling together and on one magical trip to China, while Rosey was quietly taking pictures of the view from The Great Wall of China, Tayar brought out a pretty, pink ribbon and asked Rosey to marry him. Since Rosey didn’t have fingers, Tayar bought her a ribbon to tie around her long, elegant neck instead.
Rosey loved her ribbon and never took it off again. Oh, and by the way, she said yes to marrying Tayar too 😉
The two happy lovebirds had a bigger surprise coming too! After they got married, Tayar and Rosey flew to Egypt so Rosey would meet Tayar’s family. While they were sitting with Teta Goose and Gedo Goose telling stories about their trip to China, Rosey suddenly made a loud “Honk!” and her eyes were open wide in surprise. Teta and Gedo Goose and Tayar looked at her strangely…then again, she went “Honk!!”
Tayar was getting a bit embarrassed, thinking Rosey was making fun of his parents so he asked her quietly “are you alright?” but when Rosey, opened her beak to try to explain, all that came out was the loudest “HOOOONK!!!” It was so loud Tayar felt his hat fly off (with a few feathers from his head too!) all the way to the end of the room!
While Tayar was still trying to gather his thoughts, Teta Goose suddenly broke the silence that followed that strange behaviour from Rosey with a roaring laugh. Teta just kept laughing and laughing till both Tayar and Gedo shouted at the same time “What are you laughing about?!!!?!” so she pointed with her wing to the seat under Rosey and…can you guess what they saw? 3 Eggs!
Rosey & Tayar were going to have goslings soon! That’s what baby geese are called.
Now every goose knows that it takes a whole month for a gosling to be big enough to crack the egg shells around her and say hello to her parents for the first time, but Tayar and Rosey could only stay in Egypt for 2 days! They had to fly back to China as they promised a very wise, old Phoenix they had met there that they will bring him a Scarab pendant from Egypt for good luck before his birthday. The phoenix had to have that pendant before his 100th birthday or else, he would have a whole year of bad luck and his birthday was only 5 days away!
It’s a good thing Tayar was so well practiced in flying because he really had to fly all over the place this time! While Rosey was keeping their eggs warm (that’s the most important thing for an egg to hatch safely) he quickly flew
to the Great Pyramids of Giza to find the Magical scarab pendant for their friend in China. It wasn’t easy to find the Scarab because The Egyptian Pyramids are full of birds selling all sorts of pretty pendants but Tayar knew he had to find a very special one. After looking around for a long time, he was about to give up when he saw a crowd of birds looking with excitement at some beautiful pendants sold by a couple of Geese who called themselves The Maydoum Geese. The owners of
this shop were the most elegant birds Tayar had ever seen… and when he went to ask them about the scarab pendant, they were so polite and helpful, that they made it so easy for him to choose his lucky scarab in minutes. He then rushed back home to Rosey to find her and Teta busy wrapping up the eggs warmly, then putting them in a small coffee cup so they can carry them safely while flying.
“There you are Tayar. Just in time. Did you find the scarab?”
“Yes. Here it is. What do you think?”
“Oh it’s perfect! Let’s put it in the cup to give our goslings good luck on their first trip”
After saying their goodbyes to Teta & Gedo goose, Tayar & Rosey immediately flew off to China. Since China was very far away from Egypt, they made a couple of stops along the way. Tayar always dreamed of watching a football match played by the best footballer in all bird kingdom, Ronaldo the Rooster, in Portugal. Ronaldo was famous all over the world for his football skills. It was going to be a very roundabout way of getting to China since Egypt is in the middle between China and Portugal but since they loved flying so much, Tayar and Rosey decided to flex their wings and get ready for the longest flight they had ever flew before!
Lucky for Tayar, they reached Portugal just in time for the game. He couldn’t sit still from excitement. Rosey was sitting next to him, watching over the eggs between them when suddenly, Tayar shouted “Nooo!” Rosey looked up to see the ball Ronaldo kicked just about to fall on their eggs when another exciting event happened just at that moment!
They heard a cracking sound and then, all of a sudden,
a little foot kicked itself free from the egg shells and kicked the ball back to Ronaldo!! The whole stadium of birds went silent. Everyone was shocked that this little gosling with its tiny feet could kick a ball, and all the way down to the players too!!
Ronaldo the rooster flew up to see this powerful little gosling and said “this gosling is going to be the next football wonder. I look forward to watching her play someday” then, he flew up in the air, did a summersault and kicked the ball down to the field. The crowd cheered and cried “GOAL!!!” as the ball went straight into the other teams goal!.
As far as Tayar was concerned, this was the best game ever played. Especially by his first little gosling. He was so proud, he went out and bought his baby bird a big ribbon for her hair.
“One day when she’s old enough, I’ll buy her a football. She must learn to fly first” he proudly said to Rosey.
Rosey replied “let’s call her Korra” which meant ball in Arabic.
Next stop for this exciting family is Turkey!
This time it was Rosey’s turn to have fun. She didn’t get a chance to swim in the beaches of Egypt & Portugal and really missed it. So as soon as she saw the beautiful Bosphurus Canal in Turkey, she flew down for a swim. She took little Korra along for her first swim too. While teaching her to swim, Rosey looked up to see Tayar waving excitedly at her.
She gently put Korra on her back and flew up to the shore where a lovely surprise was waiting for her.
Another egg cracked and out came their son! It became a tradition for Tayar to go out and find a gift for each goose in his family. So he flew off to find the ideal gift for his son.
He found a very interesting Turkish hat called a tarboush (Fez) and brought it back with his gosling’s new name too, Tarboush.
Tarboush was very happy with his hat, he kept twirling about in it to watch the hanging threads move around his head. “haha. This one’s going to have a sense of humour” laughed Rosey.
Before they were ready to fly off again, Tarboush flapped his little wings hard and started flying! That was very unusual for such a young gosling. His parents looked at each other excitedly and said “He’s going to be a flyer too!” Then the four birds and their egg were off to China!
hey still had to give their friend his scarab. This was the longest part of their trip. Filled with many dangers as the weather went from windy to rainy with thunder and storms for 2 whole days till they finally reached China. They went straight to The Great wall in time for the birthday celebration. They looked for the wise Phoenix to give him his gift and found him waiting for them with a happy smile on his face. “Thank you, my dear friends for traveling such a long trip for my birthday.
I knew you wouldn’t forget me and now that you saved me from a year of bad luck with this beautiful, magical pendant, I want to give you something too. But first, you must try my birthday cake”
Our heroes were so tired from their trip so they agreed to sit down and have some cake before they had to leave again. As they sat down together to eat, something magical happened. The Phoenix put on the Scarab pendant and suddenly started to change. He flew up in the air and glowed so brightly then his feathers had all changed from red to Gold!
They were so attracted to what’s happening to the Phoenix that they didn’t even notice their tiniest egg had cracked and next to them was sitting their 3rd gosling! She was so quite… they were afraid the trip might have made her ill. Rosey was so worried. The Phoenix flew down to where they sat, held the baby gosling tenderly and sang a very sweet lullaby. No one ever heard anything so beautiful before. Suddenly with the beautiful sound of the phoenix another beautiful sound was heard. A very soft and musical “honk”.
The gosling was saved by the magic of the Phoenix! Everyone was so happy they began to celebrate, and it turned out to be one of the most fun birthday parties ever. “She’ll be a singer” Said Rosey, tenderly looking down at her melodious little girl.
After celebrating the phoenix, true to his word, handed Tayar a gift. He gave him one of his golden feathers to stick on his hat. “This will protect you on your travels and whoever touches it will have good luck. I wish you safe travels my friend and…thank you” The Phoenix also asked to name their new hatchling. Because he saved her life, Tayar and Rosey were happy to let him name her Fù, meaning good luck in Chinese.
Whenever they got ready to fly on one of their trips after that, each member of the family of Geese and goslings would touch the feather in Papa Goose’s hat for good luck.
In keeping with his tradition, Tayar went out and bought baby Fù a pretty new hat to keep her head warm during their next flight to….
I’ll leave that part for you to fill in ;-)
Acknowledgment
I’d like to thank my co-author, Valentina Doss, for helping me write this story. Valentina is 5 years old. She’s the youngest of 3 siblings. She’s very good friends with her older sister & brother, Sophia and Theo.
Her hobbies are petting animals, traveling and playing tricks 😉
Taya Doss