Brian in STL sent this, commenting:
There is dispute in comments as to whether the Wiz is angry because his wife corrected him and he is going to “zap” her or whether he’s mad because he hates geese and is going to do something about that. People having personal experience with geese (including me) tend towards the latter.
Anyone who has had Canada Geese (not “Canadian” Geese!) in their neighborhood can well imagine it’s the birds he’s mad at, but it sure seems unclear.
Comics I Don't Understand 
It was unclear at first but upon reflection I think being ready to zap the geese is the only logical explanation.
He loves the duckies, when he finds out they are geese he is crazed. She she was better off just letting him think they were duckies.
He’s mad because she’s sucking the fun out of his duckies.
Definitely geese. The perspective in the last panel is a little confusing. He could either be behind her (to attack her) or beside her (to attack the geese). But given her eyes in the last panel, and their positions in the first panel, I think he’s beside her.
The perspective does not make it clear whether his wand is pointed at Blanche or off in the distance. Even if we accept the premise that zapping the geese† is more likely, Blanche’s side-glance make it pretty clear that she is worried about becoming a victim of collateral damage.
P.S. † – Geese can be somewhat aggressive if they think you have bread and are holding out on them, but they are not nearly as bad as swans (which are much larger and correspondingly more dangerous). Golfers tend to dislike geese, which are notorious for depositing their droppings all over the course (including the greens). The stuff is really nasty: sticky, extremely slippery, and perfectly colored to be camoflaged on grass. Stepping on one of those invisible lawn mines is an immediate invitation to trip and fall.
P.P.S. Perhaps the Wizard’s avian enmity is based on personal experience. I cannot recall a strip in which he was actually playing, but I did find a couple of strips in which he was caddying for the King:
He sees the birds, thinks they are cute ducks. Same birds, but now they are geese, so they must die.
Reminds me of this joke:
Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, “Don’t do it!” He said, “Nobody loves me.” I said, “God loves you. Do you believe in God?”
He said, “Yes.” I said, “Are you a Christian or a Jew?” He said, “A Christian.” I said, “Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?” He said, “Protestant.” I said, “Me, too! What franchise?” He said, “Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?” He said, “Northern Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?”
He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist.” I said, “Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?” He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region.” I said, “Me, too!”
Northern Conservative†Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?” He said, “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.” I said, “Die, heretic!” And I pushed him over.
I agree with Xine Fury it is the side eye that strongly suggest that he is next to his wife and getting ready to zap the geese.
I think geese are well-known enough for being ill-tempered and often a nuisance that the joke is pretty clearly about the Wizard’s animosity toward geese. Will his wand be effective? If cartoons have taught me anything it is that the only way to get rid of geese is to use lasers.
@TedD, that joke is attributed to Emo Philips, who typically closes his shows with it even today.
Probably misogynist. Geese would clearly be indicated if either (a) his wife was to his left in the past panel, or even if (b) his wife was omitted in the last panel. But his wife is there, to the right, in the way. Perhaps he intends to smite both her and the geese.
@ billytheskink – The stray dagger (†) in the version that TedD quoted probably indicates that it was quoted directly from this article in the Guardian (written by Emo Philips). He finishes there with a collection of several (much) shorter (and even better) religious jokes. My favorites were these two:
== “So I’m at the wailing wall, standing there like a moron, with my harpoon…”
== “I’m not Catholic, but I gave up picking my belly button for lint.”
I think you are all being hard on our beloved Canada geese. To them, a golf course is a smorgasbord. How would you react if a bunch of idiots were playing a silly game on your dining table?
Definitely a case of bad layout. Wiz was to the right of Blanche in panel 1, but then the camera rotates so he’s to the left, creating the very confusion that landed this strip on the CIDU radar. If he’d stayed to the right of Blanche, the ambiguity would have been eliminated.
That’s why film school teaches about “don’t cross the line”.
Many people say “cute little duckies.” I do not know of anyone who ever said “cute little goosies.”
Geese remind me of Victor Borge talking about a certain composer: “He was a Portuguese. …
He married a Portugoose.
They had three children (one each). Portugoslings.”
I know of an organization in Silver Spring, MD, that works at keeping geese from landing and pooping on their parking lot.
Wouldn’t he have been a Portugander?
@ Kilby
Emo Philips has added a few new religious jokes to his shows in recent years. I especially liked one where he talks about getting an internet license to officiate a pagan wedding where he “learned about Ishtar, the earth mother, and her husband Ish, the god of approximation.”
I live about 500 feet north of a golf course that I walk my dog by everyday (on a public walkway, thank you.). There are three ponds between the 10th and 18th holes that have become a mini-wild life refuge, with stilts, moorhens (alae’ula and alae’keo), night herons, sandpipers, and nene (the Hawai’ian goose). Mostly, when we approach, the geese just slowly waddle away, noisily complaining, but December-January is when all of the goslings appear (and sorry, MiB, they are cute). On occasion a protective parent will hiss and charge at my dog, but to be honest, he has been attacked a lot more by mother hens (even more plentiful than geese.) Fortunately, Oliver is a very laid back pupper, and generally ignores the wildlife. In the next few months, for some reason, the approx. 30 acres around these greens becomes the home for 150-200 nenes, which is close to 5% of their entire population, by my reckoning. I don’t know how the golfers feel about that.
Is he trying to turn those geese into ducks?
I mentioned in the strip comments that one of the buildings I worked at Megacorp had a year-round pond at the time that was part of the cooling system. This attracted a resident population of geese. During nesting season the males would chase and nip people.
“That’s why film school teaches about “don’t cross the line”” – though often that’s more about crossing the eye line; it’s normal to have an over-the-shoulder shot looking at a scene (with the characters in it) then cutting to showing the faces of the people looking at the scene, but still staying on the same side of them and them still looking off to the right, in this case.
Can be awkward but still doable sometimes is crossing over so the wife would be in the foreground, looking to the left of frame, as though the observer had passed through or in front of the characters to get to the new point of view.
Most awkward and wrong is crossing the line when two people are talking to each other, each in their own closeup – the camera should be like a natural but unseen observer in the situation, looking from one character to another just by swivelling its/his/her head, not leaping back and forth across the eye-line connecting the two participants.
Unfortunately my favourite film by my favourite film-makers, Powell and Pressburger’s 1946 A Matter of Life and Death (Stairway to Heaven in the US), which I saw for the 10th or 15th time in a cinema only a couple of weeks ago, has this fault when two doctors are talking in a washroom. The urgency of the situation – they’re discussing vital surgery that must be done tonight – is undercut by the unsettling notion the two characters are looking a couple of feet to the side of each other while acting as though they are intensely staring into each other’s eyes.
The layout in the cartoon is confusing, though.. it might have been better if the wizard’s outline had partly overlapped his wife’s, so you could tell he was beside her (as well as beside himself, with fury, ho ho) and definitely not behind her.
@guero – the local golf course adjoining my village has two public rights of way across it, crossing several fairways and going alongside the entirety of one hole, harking back to the auld days when it was just farm fields. You’re expected to pay attention when crossing, and not stray from the line of the path (not that it is a visible track, just the line between stiles and little plank bridges over ditches).
(Previous message about line-crossing disappeared into moderation)
“(Previous message about line-crossing disappeared into moderation)”
Actually, Spam (which is harder to predict /avoid). It was more extensive, so well worth restoring rather than abandoning as repetitive. Just give me a minute …
Duck, Duck, GOOSE! (Boy Scouts flashback).
Looking at the comic again, it seems to me the characters are in the same relative position, it’s just our angle of view of them that has changed. In the last panel of the comic our “camera” is looking from the other side of the railing, rather than over their shoulder as in the first.
larK: Why, was he from Newfoundland? 🤪