Skip to content

Nancy the goose

Nancy is Alberta Wilmarth's enormous, aggressive goose, a comic menace who besieges the Sherman Ranch guest house, bites Huell, steals Andrew Howard's jacket and finally befriends the real Howard after his return.
Type Animal (apparently mundane)
Aliases Nancy; the goose; Alberta's goose; Betsy (Huell's misnomer)
Affiliation Owned by Alberta Wilmarth
Status Alive (as of Walkers 09)
First appearance Walkers 02
Home Sherman Ranch

Description

An enormous goose that spreads its wings, hisses, honks, charges and bites. It is smart: it tests the house for entry, pops up at windows, watches Kurt and shadows Howard, whom it seems to sense is "weak of will." It is docile only with its owner and eats meat scraps. Per the ranch security woman, it is "happy when she feels powerful," so the advice is to run. Pepper spray is reportedly useless (Walkers 02). Rita sums it up in Walkers 04: "it likes one person, and everyone else is dinner" (Walkers 04).

History

Walkers 02: first charge

Nancy charges Kurt, then jumps into Alberta's arms and hisses at him. Alberta calls her a "big softie"; Walt vows to eat her ("One of these days I am gonna eat that thing"), and Alberta forbids it. The goose's repeated window jump-scares become a running gag (Walkers 02).

Walkers 03: the siege

An extremely angry goose waits outside the guest house. Kurt wants "Ham bang it is" because the flashbangs are on the plane; Huell throws lunch meat and rolls a flat 10, and the goose goes for the ham while the party runs. Halfway to the car it returns, and Huell's Act Under Pressure (8) is only a partial success: the goose bites his nose so hard it bleeds and swells shut. Walt calls the goose "my biggest problem in life." On their return a goose-shaped silhouette rushes them and rattles the doorknob (Walkers 03). See Guest double-wide.

Walkers 04: Operation Get Goose Out

The goose scuttles out of the dark and steals the baloney. Later it bolts into the guest house, and Huell traps it inside (Act Under Pressure 12). In "Operation Get Goose Out," it drops onto Howard's head from above the door; his pendant's force field repels it (Andrew's pendant). Kurt pries it off with stilts (9), but it escapes with Howard's jacket, eats a French toast castle from a takeout box, and leaves dung on Huell's pillow. Walt scolds Howard for letting it take the jacket ("That's showing weak. Now it knows you're weak"), noting that the owner loves the goose so no one will kill it. In Howard's dream that night, the goose, in the form of the cremated crow, pins him and explains radar physics, entirely correctly. The Biz arranges a bomb collar, thermite and a net gun from Hooster (Walkers 04). Rita asks, "what if it's not really a goose?"

Walkers 05: dropped from the roof

Alberta holds the goose calmly in her lap. While the party digs near the big house, Dante spots eyes watching from the roof, rules out the goose because the eyes would be front-facing, and Andre amends it to a single eye. As the party backs away, the goose drops from above at about 50 feet, and everyone runs. Dante later jokes about chaining the car, Betsy, to the ground, and warns Drebin that "there's a swan around here that'll pick a fight with anything" (Walkers 05).

Walkers 06 and 07: blamed first

When part of the radar is found chewed from underneath, the players blame the goose, ape men and squirrels (Walkers 06). During the naked intruder's attack, the Biz says, "Probably just the fucking goose again"; afterward the goose honks around the mud room, and Huell insists, as a dumb joke, that her name is Betsy (Walkers 07). See Naked intruder.

Walkers 09: the returned Howard

Nancy arrives along the real Howard's trail, having befriended him, hisses over his shoulder, and hops back into his arms as the cavern collapses. The party guesses her name is "Beatrice" (Walkers 09). See Andrew Howard (the Monstrous). In a line about an unrecorded session, Rita as the duplicate Howard says he spent the whole afternoon explaining the situation to the goose (Walkers 09); see Andrew Howard (duplicate).

Trivia

  • Huell's "Betsy" is a deliberate joke that collides with the party's car, also called Betsy; see Betsy (Walkers 07).
  • Recurring jokes include Jurassic Park (Walkers 03 and 04), "Elsa. Scatter." (Walkers 03) and the Alien scene (Walkers 05). In Walkers 09, Rita jokes that Nancy is Howard's middle name.
  • Quote from Dante as Kurt in Walkers 05: "I've eaten in trenches and felt less pressure from the enemy forces than this goddamn goose."

Appearances