As the Portuguese say, what doesn’t kill you makes you fatter. It’s kind of like stronger, but much more Portuguese and by that I mean much more about drinking and eating custard pastries.

I’ve been thinking recently about unlikely love and when it ends. Human/human. Human/nonhuman. And then I saw the story of Maria the toulouse goose and her man, a retired Echo Park resident named Dominic Ehrler.

A year ago Maria started following Dominic around the park. She’s defended him from dogs and even tries to fly home with him when he gets on his scooter.

“When she first started following me around like a dog I got goose bumps,” Dominic told the LA Times. “David Foster, one of the parks people here, finally introduced me to her. He said, ‘You know you’re being stalked! Her name is Maria.’”

Flickr photo via LaCaMod

CBS News made a cheesy and yet wonderful video: http://www.wimp.com/gooseman.

And in February a group of fans apparently sang to her. “Maria” of course.

As for how the friendship has changed Dominic, “I quit eating poultry,” he said. “I used to think birds were dumb.”

Footnote: It turns out that Maria is actually a male. And so Dominic is now calling him Mario.