In Saskatchewan, Canada, Steve the goose and his sister Lulu became a huge part of the Shymko family.
They took the geese under their wings nine years ago and soon realized the pair had big personalities, especially Steve.
Carla Shymko, Steve’s human mum, found that he would follow her around the yard and rarely left her side. Steve and Lulu even slept next to the family dogs, and would always be the first ones to greet anyone coming to their house.
Steve has been an important family member to the Shymkos, and it was understandable that they were left devastated when Carla went out one morning to find that Steve wasn’t there. Confused, she noticed a pile of white feathers on the ground, which caused her to expect the worst.
Despite this, Carla refused to give up on Steve and took to a local, online Facebook group for lost and found pets. She was initially worried people think she was crazy for looking for a goose but soon found people’s responses were the opposite.
“I thought people might think I’m crazy looking for a goose,” Carla said in The Dodo. “I ended up putting something on Moose Jaw Lost And Found Pets and a couple of other pages and honestly within an hour, I had hundreds of comments. The kindest people reached out to me. People offered to go driving around looking for him.”
After her online appeal, Carla received the heart-breaking information from a neighbor that they had seen a fox with a goose in its mouth down the road that morning.
“We were devastated. Especially the thought of him being hurt badly and suffering was just so sad for us. He was such a huge part of our family and we were heartbroken,” Carla said.
Thinking they had lost Steve forever, Carla’s husband woke up the next day to a tapping noise coming from their door, and to his surprise, he discovered Steve there.
“Steve was waiting at our back sliding doors where he would always wait for me when I would go in the house. He was weak and laying down… gently pecking on the window trying to tell us he was home.”
Despite being exhausted, Steve still had enough energy to run into his human mom’s arms when seeing Carla again. For the first week after he returned home, Steve was ‘very weak and very scared’, but has since made a full recovery and returned to his usual self.