The old children’s game “duck, duck, goose” has nothing on the real-life scenes that have played out before me three times in the past month.

The first time I was driving through the heart of the Southern Illinois University Edwardsville campus when I had to stop for a pair of geese and their goslings marching across Circle Drive. It was a great sight, first the mama, then four or five babies, then the dad, following in the wake.

In recent years, SIUE has had more than its share of adventures with geese and the droppings they leave behind, so the sighting there was not terribly unexpected. Still, it was cute.

Then came this past Saturday, in Wood River. I was just crossing the Phoebe Goldberg overpass heading west toward Alton. It was early and traffic was not a factor, but in the distance I could see that a pickup truck had stopped in the opposite lanes of Route 143, in front of the Bel-Air Motel.

As I got nearer I could see a passenger in the truck had gotten out to guard a group of ducks as they crossed from north to south, heading in the direction of the motel, perhaps to sleep off a long night. I counted a mama, at least three babies and one concerned citizen.

About 12 hours later, I encountered an amazingly similar scene as I pulled into the American Legion in Edwardsville, en route to a wedding reception. There on the Legion driveway was another mother duck, leading her little ones to the opposite shore.

All this waterfowl misadventure just quacked me up.

Rarely do I get to enjoy such sights, but here I did three times in a month and twice in a day. I guess it was nature’s way of telling me that all is not so bad in the world.

I’ve had a lot of stories fall on me through the years.

Some “fell” in the sense that they fell apart. A few others fell on my head, the result of not paying proper attention.

But last week, one of the really interesting stories I’ve ever dealt with fell in my lap — twice.

It started on Tuesday, the day after staff writer Linda Weller reported on a shooting incident Sunday in the 1500 block of Mack Street in Alton. Knowing of our interest in the story, Police Chief Chris Sullivan stopped by the office that day to hand me a copy of a DVD. Some time back, we told the chief of our new ability to broadcast video on our Web site. Anytime he had surveillance footage or crime scene footage, we told him, The Telegraph could help get the word and images to the public via a whole new medium.

What Sullivan gave me, however, was far more than I bargained, and it bordered on the unreal. It was a home video of a fistfight-turned-gunfight that was, in the days that followed, the talk of the town — and viewed around the world. The fight was organized to settle a feud, as was the filming, but the gunfight that broke out at the end of the footage, seemed to just happen. Fortunately it was not fatal, but the MAC-10 semiautomatic gun at the center of the event continues to draw attention.

For me, the story wasn’t over, even after we wrote about the video. Last Friday, a 17-year-old man at the center of the events, Bryon Blake, called the newsroom to tell us he wanted to get his side of the story on record prior to turning himself in. Police had been looking for him since that Sunday. I just happened to be the one to take the call.

The half hour that followed was a blur — a series of calls to me from Blake about everything from the shooting to his life growing up to the reason he dropped out of Alton High School. He would talk a while, ask me a lot of questions, hang up, think of something else and call me again. After his last call, he said he would be calling me again. Instead, within the hour he was turning himself in at Madison County Jail.

I wrote a detailed story about the conversation that ran Saturday. Here, I’m leaving out some of the facts just to move the tale along. The police and prosecutor’s office and a judge are now going to have to separate the fact from fiction. More charges are being contemplated so this story is far from over.

We’ll see which way the rest of this story “falls” and whether or not any of it will fall toward me.

Somehow it always seems to.

As an editor, it drives me crazy when a reporter comes back with a story missing a key fact. The “five Ws” and the “handful of Hs” are all I want. Who, what, when, where and why? How long? How much? How soon?

“How,” though, is often more like “however,” since there are always roadblocks to the truth. We hit on a dandy obstacle this week chasing down the strange tale of two Jersey County dog kennel operators charged with multiple counts of inhumane treatment of animals.

From the time I first got the tip on this story on Tuesday, all I wanted to know was “how many” animals were involved. That fact eluded us for another two days — a bit like a spooked Shih Tzu running for cover — which, in fact, was pretty close to the truth. There were Shih Tzus, Pomeranians, Boston terriers and all kinds of breeds, and they were in such miserable shape that it literally took your breath away.

The first number I heard was 70, which seemed pretty incredible, but reporter Laura Griffith, despite her best efforts, could get no more than an estimate of “at least 60” on our first day’s story.

By the next day, the number was still wavering. The veterinarian said he’d treated “about 35” and expected to treat “dozens more.” I heard privately the number was about 100. I’m pretty sure police and animal abuse investigators were still trying to figure it out.

By Thursday, it was time for the truth. At a press conference, State’s Attorney Ben Goetten and Sheriff Mark Kallal said the number was 115.

That’s official enough for me. That’s the number we’re going to stick with until it changes again.

When people die, the loved ones they leave behind are best served by thinking only of their fondest memories. The same thing can be said on the passing of the family cat.

And when the cat lives to be 22, there are a lot of memories.

“Tillie” came into the world on March 29, 1986, and left it on tax day, April 15, 2008. She was one for the ages. She may not have been the oldest cat on record, but she seemed like it, and by the end, it was time. We all cried our eyes out, but we were strangely at peace.

She was a long-haired domestic with a fiery temper that convinced me she was of Irish decent. She could be cuddly when she wanted to be, but she had no compunction about using her claw power. And her feline canines found their way into my hand more times than I can count. There was no messing with the “queen.”

Our three kids grew up with Tillie, and until this week, none of them could remember a time without her. Typically a family will go through multiple cats in a lifetime. Ours went through one.

For most of the first 15 or so years, the cat slept with me and my wife, and she had this nasty habit of jumping on the bed and climbing over me to get to the restful spot on my wife’s side. Only a hard day of bug chasing could break that habit, and on those days, she was too exhausted to get past me.

And, of course, there was no need for an alarm clock. She ran on an engine that required stoking every morning at 5 a.m. Cats are said to sleep an average of 20 hours a day, and I could never figure how she picked her particular breakfast schedule.

She spent a lot of time outdoors and could be gone hours at a time. One night, she got a little too smart and climbed up on the neighbors’ carport roof. Yours truly was called upon for rescue detail and forced to get out the extension ladder at something like 3 in the morning. I’m pretty sure my neighbors slept through it, since the cops never came.

Until the last couple of months she remained active. As recently as last week she stood and stared at the back door long enough that I let her out for a stroll around the house. It was her last good walk.

I’ve tried various ways to estimate how old she was in human years. The old formula called for a 1 to 7, human-to-cat ratio, but that has been shown as inaccurate in recent years. A cat’s first couple of years are more like 24 to a human, then they slow down. I couldn’t find a single chart estimating how old a 22-year-old cat would be, but the closest estimate I could get is somewhere around 105.

That’s old, in anyone’s book.

She had a remarkable life, extended no doubt by her royal treatment.

I buried her Wednesday, at the bottom of the back yard, under a pine tree. The rain will stay off her that way, and the pine needles will provide fine cover. I had a sign out front that proudly noted our home as a “Kitty Crossing.” I moved it to the bottom of the hill. It was the least I could do for an old friend.

She was, after all, the queen.

The gas crisis is making friends out of strangers.

I discovered that fact Thursday during my weekly fill-up, when complete strangers on both sides of my pump felt compelled to talk to me about the price of fuel. I was at the Conoco station at Glen Carbon Road and Illinois Route 159 in Glen Carbon.

The first to comment was an older man, around 70, wearing a ball cap and coat to keep himself dry in a pouring rain. It had rained the entire day and this was late afternoon, and both of us had enough, even under a protective canopy. He was filling up a pickup truck to my left and was the first to speak.

“Awful, isn’t it?” he said, catching my attention. I immediately knew what he was talking about.

“Yeah,” I shot back as the gauge passed $20. “You’d think we could at least get a free car wash.”

“Or a cup of coffee,” he rejoined.

I smiled and went on with my pumping….. $30, $31, $32.

That day, of course, gas prices hit another record. Hardly a person could believe the signage when they pulled onto the lot. It was almost a joke.

A young woman on my right came around the back of her car and approached mine, just close enough for a casual exchange. She actually had a smile on her face, enjoying a black-hearted moment.

“Three dollars and fifty nine cents,” she pronounced crisply. “Isn’t that ridiculous?”

“Yes it is,” I said, noting that she forgot to mention the “point nine.” As in “$3.59.9.”

It was an odd moment. Except for times when I recognize people at the gas station, I almost never speak to anyone. And here, people on both sides of my gas pump greeted me like a friend. I felt like I was on a crowded elevator stuck between floors — when you have no choice but to talk.

That day, as I always do, I used my debit card and hoped I had enough in the account to cover me. The final damage was $56 and change — the most I ever spent to fill up a gas tank.

I rarely carry cash on me anymore, and as I pulled out of the lot I saw a group of young men with collection canisters at the front door. I could read only the word “mission” on their sign, so I figured whatever they were up to had to be worthwhile.

I stopped in the parking lot, rolled down my window and waved one of them over. He presented me with an empty plastic container, into which I plunked 70 cents in coins. Not counting my $56 in fuel, the change was all my car and I had left.

The caller had a simple question, so much so that it almost caught me off guard.

“Do you guys have a copy editor there?” he wanted to know.

“Yes,” I said cautiously, suspecting the chastising that was about to come. “We have several.”

“Well, then, why don’t you catch your mistakes?”

“We miss things once in a while,” I admitted, vastly understating the truth, but establishing my typical defensive posture. I never jump the newsroom ship no matter how much it’s listing, especially when people want to challenge our operations.

“Once in a while?” he laughed. “You’ve had all kinds of them lately!” He then proceeded to point them out. One by one, the litany continued, and I was just glad the caller couldn’t see me cringe.

“And then there’s the obit in today’s paper. You’ve got this woman married to a man in December 2008 in one paragraph and later you say he died in 1964!”

Ouch, I thought (or said out loud). “We didn’t catch that one.”

“And the other day,” he continued, “you had a police item …..”

The rant went on and I took it for a couple of minutes because I felt I had it coming. This guy was a regular reader and I didn’t want to give him anything more than a promise to do better, which I eventually did.

Telling readers that “we’re only human” only goes so far when it comes to excuses, but it’s about as true as truth gets.

Newspapers commit a host of errors, and not all of them are the responsibility of the staff. A lot of what we write is based on submission (police reports, obituaries, weddings, etc.) and many of those have mistakes when they arrive — wrong dates, wrong name spellings, wrong addresses.

Then, there are the mistakes we make as hampered journalists. We hear somebody on the phone say, for instance, the name “Heff,” and it sounds just like “H-E-S-S” when it’s spelled. We’ll read it back, and the party on the other end will hear it spelled just like he thought he was saying it.

Part of that miscommunication could be the bologna sandwich the caller was eating or it could be our own deaf ears — or the motorcycles passing by on Broadway, drowning out all conversation.

There are also the mistakes we make as harried journalists. I have my own little form of shorthand. If I write A B C D E F in my notes, I could interpret that as “Anybody But Charlie Does Excellent Fishing.” Then again, I could also interpret it as “Afghan Businessman Charlie Does Equestrian Feeding.”

Then, there are the mistakes we make we when flat don’t pay attention — using “were” for “we’re” and the like. Spellcheck simply doesn’t catch everything.

We butcher grammar, usage, spelling and subject-verb agreement so often that you’d think we do it on purpose. You couldn’t be more wrong.

I’d love to have people on our staff who do nothing but copy-editing, but at a newspaper our size, copy-editing is only one of many responsibilities. Sometimes it should be the most important thing we do, but all too often it isn’t.

Most of our critics, of course, have never worked at a newspaper, have no comprehension of what takes place on the inside (we call it the “Daily Miracle”) and only know what they see in print. And once it’s printed there’s no taking it back.

Doctors, at least, can bury their mistakes. A newspaper’s live on in infamy.

After a week of fun and sun on ocean beaches and the high seas, I’m back in the states, crash-landing hard in reality.

Sue and I took a cruise to the Bahamas and Key West, Fla., aboard the Majesty of the Seas, an ocean liner operated by Royal Caribbean International. I actually came back with a bit of a tan (or as my daughter likes to point out, a lesser shade of pale).

Truly, there’s nothing to get the spirits up quite like getting away from home, especially at a time when home is getting several inches of rain. There we were, surrounded by the waters of the south Atlantic and completely unaware that my brother-in-law back in Glen Carbon had almost as much water in his basement.

Cruises aren’t for everyone, of course. If, for instance, you don’t like good food, friendly faces, girls in bikinis and frolicking nightlife, you might as well stay home. And if you can get past the occasional roiling surf, you’ve got it made. (Seasickness patches are the trick.)

A cruise is an interesting mix of cultures, things to do and places to see — definitely a step up for the vacation-challenged people stuck in the annual trek to see the Bald Knobbers in Branson.

We started off in Miami and sailed to a couple of islands in the Bahamas, then to Key West and back to Miami. There are all sorts of versions of the Caribbean experience, just as there are all types of cruises to ports around the globe. This was our second cruise; the first was along the eastern seaboard of the United States and Canada.

The 880-foot, 12-story ship is enormous. There were 2,600 passengers and more than 800 crew members, with the crew representing more than 60 nationalities. Even the people who could barely speak English could still communicate good will.

On board, there isn’t a time during the day that there is not something to do. On this cruise was an art gallery, a library, a casino, multiple pools, multiple lounges and performers, a theater with several shows (comedians and musical), spa, basketball court, jogging track, dance floor and rocking-climbing wall.

And, no, I didn’t rock climb.

What I did do, among other things, was make a perfect fool of myself, dancing in a midnight conga line while dressed in my best suit.

But that’s a story for another day.

Here’s a link if you want to read all about this wonderful sailing vessel:

http://www.royalcaribbean.com/findacruise/ships/class/ship/home.do?shipCode=MJ

I’m going to be a grandpa.

There, I’ve said it. I can’t think of anything that sounds better than that — certainly nothing I’ve written in the last 30 years.

Daughter Kim and husband Chris Stevens hit us with the news on the weekend, and I’m still pulling Grandma Sue down from the ceiling. It’s a first for them — and for us.

They presented us with a smallish picture frame with the words, “Grandma and Grandpa’s Ray of Sunshine.” Inside it, instead of a picture, was a printed note: “Coming Sept. 17. Picture to arrive later. Surprise!”

I glanced into the reflective plastic inside the frame and could see myself.

“Look,” I quipped. “The baby looks just like me!”

Yep, it’s definitely a surprise. Or is it? I always suspected something like this could happen. After all, newlyweds get a lot of practice. I didn’t dare ask them for specifics, but from what I gather they were doing more than opening gifts last Christmas.

The bigger surprise, I suppose, is the relative calm that I feel about the whole thing. After all, I wasn’t ready to be a father 27 years ago and, still, it happened. Now, I ask myself, am I ready to be a grandpa? I find myself answering, delightfully, unabashedly, unashamedly, YES!

That’s YES! as in three-strikes-in-the-tenth-frame YES! As in Cards 10, Cubs 0, major-news-scoop, pump-my-first-into-the-air YES!

We called everybody we could think of, but I’m sure we missed a few. Maybe this note will reach the stragglers.

No question about it, “Father’s Little Dividend” is on the way. I’m about to recreate Spencer Tracy’s best role, but this is much better than anything in the movies.

It’s the role of a lifetime, and I’m ready for rehearsal.

I’ll never forget the sign I once saw in a Wisconsin dairy shop, while on vacation years ago with my wife and three kids. To this day, the thought of it makes me smile:

“WHAT A FRIEND WE HAVE IN CHEESES.”

I remembered that semi-blasphemous piece of marketing recently after experiencing a real treat at the Whole Foods Market on Brentwood Boulevard in St. Louis — a cheese class for the connoisseur.

Whole Foods is more than an unusual, organic, food store. It’s also the site of dozens of food events throughout the year, served up by in-store chefs and the occasional culinary guest. The setting is a tiny banquet area discreetly tucked to one corner of the store, and the hosts talk about everything — from tenderloin and Tempranillo to the tastiness of tagine.

If those terms sounds alien, I suggest you look them up. Food is all about learning and I’ve learned a lot from the two classes I enjoyed this past year.

For a guy raised on Kraft American Slices and the occasional Velveeta toasted cheese (and one who admittedly likes both), I was surprised to learn there is a cheese for every palate. You simply have to know where to look for the available varieties. In some cases you have to travel to distant lands — or find a place like Whole Foods, ready to import it for you.

The store played host to “I Love Ewe,” a grand salute to cheese made from sheep’s milk. For $20 a person, guests sampled a plate lavishly decked out in colorful cheeses and food accompaniments, paired with various wines.

The idea was to take a few bites of cheese and half a glass of wine, then a few more bites of a different cheese and another half-glass of wine, etc. By the end of the evening, I had plenty of cheese — and more than enough vino.

So what did I learn?

I learned that Spanish Sheep’s Crema goes great with sparkling wine.

I found out that Herve Mons Pyrenees from France tastes best with dry rose’.

I discovered that Berger de Rocastin from France finishes nicely with Cava, a bubbly wine.

I found out that Neals Yard Spenwood is terrific with red Zinfandel. (It should be — the English cheese goes for $35.99 a pound.)

Roncal from Spain washes down nicely with Spanish Grenache.

Herve Mons Lavort Fume from France is yummy with Gerwurtraminer.

I also learned that if I hadn’t taken notes while I was doing all this, I’d have played heck trying to figure out the spellings after all that wine.

Whole Foods is definitely worth a visit. You can find it on the Web at www.wholefoodsmarket.com. The store does classes on pasta, raw foods, beer, vegetables, pork, seafood and many others.

I always liked gouda. And cheddar is better, but after my recent meal, I’m convinced more than ever that the next time somebody asks me if I want a little cheese with my whine (or wine), my response will be: Gladly, yes.

Married couples never forget their first date, and I remember mine. Steve McQueen was there. So was Paul Newman.

The setting was the Wildey Theatre in downtown Edwardsville, and the date was June 4, 1975. It was a Wednesday, and on the movie screen that day, just beyond the huge, asbestos, fire-retardant curtain, was a showing of “The Towering Inferno.”

As Sue and I snuggled up to popcorn and sticky floors that evening, we knew we were experiencing something special. The Wildey had an ambiance all its own, and since we were both used to the movie house from years of Saturday kid matinees, it was a simple transition to enjoy it as a couple.

After a great movie, we went for pizza, and by the end of that first date, I had spent less than $20 — and that includes the cost of gas.

It was a memorable evening, and the lady alongside has now stuck with me for 33 years and a lot of movies. I’m guessing it is my ability to keep her entertained that continues to do the trick. It certainly isn’t my money.

All this rambling down memory lane is going to score points on the home front, but it’s really not for my personal benefit. Edwardsville Alderman Rich Walker is coordinating an effort to collect memories of the theater as part of the celebration of the building’s 100th anniversary in 2009.

There are only a handful of theaters remaining like the Wildey. It was born out of vaudeville and died with the arrival of the multiplex.

Anybody alive today, who lived in Edwardsville before 1984 when the theater closed, remembers going to the Wildey. Except for some facade work done in recent years as part of an ongoing preservation effort, the building looks no different than when I went there in 1961 to see my first big-screen movie: “101 Dalmatians.”

My mom took me then, just as she took me and my brother many other times, until we were old enough to drive ourselves. That early exposure led to my lifelong love of movies.

In fact, I’m sure it was the influence of the Wildey that prompted me to pass on a love of films to my three children, particularly my oldest son, Rob. Today, he is house manager of ShowPlace 12 Theater in Edwardsville — and a very good movie critic for the Edwardsville paper.

Rich Walker was asking for memories, and I’m glad to pass these along. They are perhaps a little melodramatic, but then so are the movies in general.

Isn’t it funny how life is so very much like art?

***

To submit a memory of the Wildey Theatre, send it to Rich Walker at  rwalker at siue.edu or 118 Hillsboro Ave., Edwardsville, IL 62025. For more information about the Wildey, visit www.wildeytheatre.com.