Killing Two Birds with One Stone

Two years ago when McDaniel was in the 8th grade, she decided to try out for the girls golf team.

There was only one other girl on the 8th grade team so they had to combine with the 7th graders to make up a whopping 7-member golf team.

McDaniel had never even swung a club before.

She took to it right away and ended up playing quite well overall.

Not that she didn’t have her moments.

One match, she came home and announced that she managed to hit a goose with her golf ball.

One of those huge black and white Canadian geese.

A girl from the opposing team gasped in horror.

McDaniel watched the goose half-limp, half-fly away.

Fast forward to this week.

Ellie is currently on the 7th/8th grade girls golf team which is so large it is split into an A and a B team.

McDaniel rode with me one evening to pick Ellie up from a golf match. She recounted the exact location of the goose hit at the very course we were driving away from.

Ellie and her friend and teammate listened intently and laughed from the back seat.

I may have even hollered out a,

“Don’t hit a goose!”

the next time I dropped them off at that course.

Tuesday night, it was my girlfriend’s turn for golf carpool.

Ellie was filled with excitement when she got in her car explaining that she had hit NOT ONE,

BUT TWO

geese.

With one golf ball.

I guess the golf ball ricocheted off of one goose and bonked the other one.

The rule in golf is that you have to play where the ball lands so Ellie had to 

“Shoo! Shoo!” 

the obviously honked off (pun intended) geese 

who were not interested AT ALL 

in quickly evacuating the scene.

They flapped their enormous wings and honked irritatedly at her and everything.

Not. Happy.

My friend said she would not have been that happy with a hole in one. Ellie ended up having a great round and got to one-up her sister’s single-goose hitting story.

Which is, you know, killing two birds with one stone.

I looked up the origin of that story and it is worth sharing:

In the Greek Mythology tale of Daedalus and Icarus. Daedalus is held captive by King Minos on Crete in a high tower. All he is able to see are high walls around him and large birds overhead awaiting his and his son, Icarus' demise. Daedalus devises a plan to throw stones at the birds in the hope of fashioning artificial wings to enable the pair to fly home. He finds, with his stone through a clever throwing motion, that he is able to strike one bird with the ricochet hitting a second bird, thus killing two birds with one stone. The rest is history.

The rest is history indeed.