Kerry Surman can only walk her bike these days. She’s still suffering from vertigo after being attacked while biking along the Trans Canada Trail near her Stittsville home.
And what’s most unusual about this story is her attacker – a Canada Goose.
Surman was biking alone on June 10th when she came across a gaggle of adult geese and goslings crossing the trail. She thought she gave them enough room to cross, but the geese thought otherwise. “The last adult goose stopped and I saw her look at me,” says Surman. “And then the next thing I remember she flew up behind me.”
The goose battered at Surman with its wings, wrapping them around her head and blocking her vision. “The last thing I remember was me screaming as I fell off my bike,” she says.
Even though Surman was wearing a helmet the fall knocked her unconscious. When she came to she made her way to Dwyer Hill Road where she flagged down a passer-by who called 9-1-1.
Surman would spend five days in hospital with a concussion, a fractured cheek bone and several cuts and bruises.
Canada Goose attacks are not uncommon around this time of year. They almost always involve an adult trying to protect its young. “Normally they just fly away. But when they have a nest or young they cannot leave them behind so they have to defend them,” says Michel Gosselin, Manager of the Bird Collection at the Canadian Museum of Nature.
But few attacks have as unfortunate an impact as Surman’s. She can laugh about it now but she won’t soon forget the hard lessons learned. She’s grateful she had her helmet. She should have had her cell phone. And she’ll stop the next time she comes across a goose and its young. “There was insult added to this injury,” she says. “After being taken down by the goose I managed to land in some poison ivy on the trail.”
