GLOUCESTER COUNTY, Va. — Of all the summer memories this year, it's safe to say Allison Tyrrell’s most memorable one might have come in the most unexpected of fashions.
"We were sitting in our beach chairs, and this goose is walking up to my husband," she said.
While hanging out on a Sunday afternoon with her family, what appeared to be a wild goose approached Tyrrell and began following her husband everywhere he went, both on the beach and to their nearby anchored boat in the water.
"This goose was so friendly," she said. "I said, 'What if this goose follows us home?' My husband says, 'It can’t follow us home because the boat goes 36 miles per hour.'"
Tyrrell shared, in a post that's been watched thousands of times on social media, a video of the goose flying across the water and following their boat all the way back to their Seaford home.
She estimated that in total, the goose traveled several miles to follow them by both sea and land.
"People asked if he’s our pet," Tyrrell said.
The running joke had been that the goose's name was "Herman," but as it turns out, the goose's name is actually Lucy.
"It's her world, we’re just living in it," Hillary Podd laughed.
Lucy's story first begins with a mysterious egg that Podd's husband found while oyster fishing.
"My husband called me one day and said, 'I found this egg. It's all alone, I have no idea what it is," she said.
"We put it in the incubator and it hatched," Podd continued. "We didn't know what it was, obviously it was some kind of bird, and she was all yellow."
Podd reached out to Tyrrell after seeing the video of the goose.
Apparently, Lucy spends a frequent amount of time on the acres of farmland outside their Gloucester County home, but Podd and her family don't consider themselves Lucy's owners. Podd said until recently, Lucy appeared to have been a duck and didn't exhibit any goose-like characteristics.
"She was all yellow, then turned grey, but didn’t have any markings until very recently.”
Podd expects at some point, Lucy might fly away and leave the area for good, but until then, it's Lucy's world they're living in.
"At first it was 'Lucy some-bird.' Now it's 'Lucy the Goose.'"