Goose - hand puppet for babies by Sterntaler

In a story circle, the figure that can make itself big is the one everybody watches. The goose hand puppet by Sterntaler spreads its wings as the tale is told. One flick and every eye in the circle is on the goose. It is a natural for ‘The Golden Goose’ and for every story in which an animal gets above itself.

The greylag goose (Anser anser) is the wild ancestor of the domestic goose and one of Europe’s commonest waterbirds. It grows to 75 to 90 centimetres in length, spans 147 to 180 centimetres across the wings and weighs two to four kilograms. Breeding sites lie beside lakes with broad reed belts, on islands and in marshland. The birds graze grasses and herbs and dig up underground plant parts with their bills. In autumn they head for maize stubble fields, where energy-rich grain has been left behind. A clutch normally holds four to six eggs, occasionally as many as twelve. On migration, greylags fly in the familiar V shape, with birds constantly swapping places inside it.

Did you know that behavioural science owes one of its best-known observations to geese? Oskar Heinroth described in 1911 how goslings follow whatever they see first after hatching. Konrad Lorenz studied this filial imprinting so closely in the 1930s that he became known as ‘the father of the geese’. His goslings followed him wherever he went.