Several Canada geese huddle together along the Lake Okanagan shoreline during a cold and blustery afternoon today, Dec. 15, 2020. The most well known goose of them all, Kevin, was nowhere to be seen.

(STEVE ARSTAD / iNFOnews.ca)

Penticton resident Dave Chuokalos says his efforts to provide some aid to an injured goose on the waterfront is not making him any friends.

Regardless, he will continue trying to help the bird he first came across this spring while taking a walk in the cold waters of Okanagan Lake.

“I heard this noise behind me, and when I turned around I saw this goose following me,” he says.

A bystander onshore called out to him, telling him the goose was a familiar sight on the lakeshore, going so far as to call it "Kevin."

“I could see it was injured, but it was also very friendly,” Chuokalos says.

While making his daily walks along the waterfront Chuokalos says he made it a point to keep an eye out for Kevin throughout the summer.

“The tourists were feeding him all kinds of stuff, but they were gone in September, and I began thinking, "who is feeding him?"

By then Chuokalos learned Kevin couldn’t fly due to a wing damaged in a dog attack earlier in the year.

“I began to worry about him, with winter coming along and with him unable to find food, so I bought some wild bird feed to give him,” he says.

Chuokalos was unprepared for the response of people who saw him feeding the bird.

“They were upset and yelling at me. I’m just trying to save an animal,” he says, adding he is undeterred by the negative response.

Chuokalos says he has others willing to help. He’s hoping he can catch Kevin so he can be taken for treatment.

“I had him trained to the point he would get close to me, but the minute I reached out to touch his neck, wow, he went crazy,” Chuokalos says.

He says something happened to Kevin a couple of weeks ago that must have scared him, and he’s since relocated to an area near Penticton Lakeside Resort.

“The other geese are ostracizing him, attacking him if he gets close. He can’t hunker down in the cold weather like the rest of them,” Chuokalos says.

He’s particularly worried about what might happen to Kevin if and when the lake’s shoreline freezes.

“He’s become famous. I don’t want to see him starve. You know what it’s like when Okanagan Lake freezes 50 yards out from shore. And if he goes out there and gets stuck, then we’re going to have a problem,” he says.

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