There exists in this world a phenomenon called the concrete goose. As far as I can determine it is a trend primarily localized in Ohio, Michigan, and to a small extent, Illinois. I don't know how Indiana escaped unscathed, perhaps they're just lucky.

Anyhow, back to the geese. The concrete goose is perhaps one of the most self-explanatory words in the English language. Ranking up there with the likes of "bookshelf" and "fudge bar" and in no way ambiguous like the word "butterfly".

It is a goose. It is made of concrete. It sits on your front porch.

Wait, explain that last one again?

The concrete goose stands about a foot and-a-half to two feet tall, and its sole purpose is life is to sit on your front porch. Weighing about 50-60 pounds it is a glorified paper weight that is there to greet you everyday when you get home. With no visible emotions, wants, desires, or messy break-ups, it is the ultimate suburban companion. It is unerringly found painted to various degrees of weather-wear, with goose-like colors. The goose is NEVER found on the porch of a single male. It is always the single woman, or elderly couple who is responsible for purchasing the goose. There are no exceptions. It seems to be the women between the ages of 34-80 that decides that this is a fabulous piece of unoriginal art to showcase on her porch. Once past the age of eighty, the woman seems to come to her senses and finds some way to get rid of the goose. The most common way is by "forgetting" the goose during a move, and leaving it for some unsuspecting couple buying their first house. This is a commonly heard between first-time home-buyers.

Woman: "Look honey, that nice old couple left us a goose."

Silence.

Man: "A goose?"

Woman: "Yeah, and it's made of concrete, isn't that clever? It'll never tip over"

More silence.

Man: "A concrete... goose?

Woman: "And look, it's even dressed up in a cute little outfit."

Sounds of man walking to the garage to get the sledge hammer.

This brings up another point. Whoever the first person was that put a small dog in a sweater, was probably the person who started the trend of dressing the geese in costumes. There are Santa geese, Halloween geese, farmer John geese, even a strange pseudo-Easter goose-bunny. And these are just a few examples that I can rattle off the top of my head. There are literally thousands of costumes for the geese. They've got a better gig than Barbi dolls. I guess relatively speaking, the geese aren't as bad as yard gnomes, because with geese you just buy different costumes, but with the gnomes you just buy more gnomes.

There's nothing really wrong with owning a congrete goose either, but it's sorta like the guy who raise his arms in a field goal motion after getting a seven-ten split. It's already been done a couple hundred thousand times before. I mean, c'mon, show some originality. How about a concrete lemur?

The moral of the node: When you find a concrete goose occupying your front porch looking benign and like it needs a new costume, remember these words of wisdom. "It's a trick, get an axe".