Geese, offspring are Web cam stars

Jack Dawson has gotten to know Ima Vandal pretty well during the three years she’s spent nesting outside his office window at the University of Idaho’s Coeur d’Alene center.

The dean knows that his feathered friend likes classical music and that when she taps her beak on his office window, it’s a sign that she’s feeling bored.

He’s watched the Canada goose and her “husband,” Joe Vandal (named after the university’s mascot), defend her nest from a pair of pesky geese UI employees have nicknamed the Clampetts.

Employees at UI’s local headquarters on the bank of the Spokane River even got to witness the hatching of six little Vandals last spring. They watched as the fuzzy, yellow goslings made a daring jump from the window box to the boardwalk below, then plopped into the river for their first swim.

This spring, Mother Goose is tending six eggs. Her every move, for the second year in a row, is being captured by a Web cam. College employees and Ima fans nationwide are prognosticating on when the Vandal offspring will start pecking through their shells.

Rob Baxter, an information technology coordinator for UI, said the camera was trained on Ima last year. The Web site, updated every 30 seconds with live footage of the nest, attracted 200 visitors in one day this week. Baxter said the camera is on during daylight hours.

Employees at UI Coeur d’Alene visit Dawson’s office for the best viewing.

“Where else could you go and get within a foot of a goose’s nest without disturbing them?” Baxter said. “It’s pretty cool.”

Barb McDonald, a management assistant at UI Coeur d’Alene, sneaks a peak through the window throughout the day and keeps the Web cam minimized on her computer screen. She’s sent links to the site to friends and family. Her daughter, a member of the Coast Guard in Miami, has already put a vote in for when the eggs will hatch.

Dawson said he thinks the goslings will pop out around the first of May.

Last year’s hatching was a big event at Harbor Center. Employees arrived one Monday to find the mustard-colored offspring walking along the ledge of the window box, a good 15 feet from the ground.

A maintenance worker suspended a tarp, but a couple of the baby geese missed the mark and instead hit the hard wooden boardwalk. One whacked its head on a steel pole as it fell.

At first, the goslings appeared still. Employees feared the worst.

Then, Baxter said, the stunned goslings got up, shook their heads and walked down the boardwalk to an opening. They jumped into the water, where Ima was waiting.

McDonald said that the first year, Ima left her nest before the eggs hatched. Previous tenants at Harbor Center told the UI employees that the geese would often nest but desert the eggs before they hatched.

When the goslings hatched last year, McDonald said she was surprised. She’s hoping Ima again proves the skeptics wrong.

From what she saw last year, McDonald said she’s come to know at least this much about Mrs. Vandal: “She’s a good mother.”