'Maria, Maria, I've Just Met A Goose Named Maria...'

By ALEXANDRA BERZON

LOS ANGELES—City engineers planning to clean up a 143-year-old lake here are ruffling the feathers of a celebrity couple.

It would be a typical Los Angeles story—with paparazzi, gawking fans and a cameo in a music video—except for the fact that one half of the couple is a goose.

The planned closing of Echo Park for a $65 million restoration is threatening to break up a most unusual couple: retiree Dominic Ehrler and a goose named Maria. WSJ's Vanessa Kaneshiro reports from Los Angeles.

The other half is a retiree named Dominic Ehrler. Their relationship started last spring when Mr. Ehrler discovered that the goose—whom locals call Maria—liked to accompany him on his daily walks around a lake in Echo Park, a neighborhood about two miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles.

He'd show up, Maria would find him and the two would walk. A city worker joked to Mr. Ehrler that he was being stalked.

Now each morning, the couple walks the loop of Echo Park Lake together. Maria waddles a few paces ahead with her head stuck up straight and her belly full of tortillas Mr. Ehrler feeds her.

When they're done, Maria walks, then runs, then flies alongside as Mr. Ehrler, 65 years old, speeds away on his red scooter. She returns to the same spot to greet him the next day.

The ritual has garnered Mr. Ehrler and Maria local fame that in one recent week brought three photographers snapping the two as they circled the lake. Bystanders pointed and shouted "Maria!" Runners slowed and turned their heads.

This Man's Best Friend

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Gary Leonard

Maria the Goose

Watching, Chuy Ramirez, a laid-off construction worker, shook his head as Mr. Ehrler and Maria strolled by. "I never saw something like that," he said. "I don't know what's going to happen when they close the lake."

Neither does the city of Los Angeles. By summer, the city will begin rehabilitating the 14-acre lake, built as a reservoir in the 1860s, but now the center of a gentrifying neighborhood where dog-walking film editors mingle with immigrant families as men fish for catfish.

In a study in 2006, the state identified problems with the lake including algae, ammonia, copper, lead, odor, PCBs and trash.

Lotus plants that once gave the lake serene beauty suddenly disappeared a few years ago; bird debris has stained the concrete path, and the water is a foreboding dark gray.

The rehabilitation project will drain the lake to remove debris and droppings from the dozens of geese and ducks that live there. For two years, the lake's fountains will be shut, its center a dry lake bed circled by a fence.

The fate of Maria and her brethren is unknown.

In its environmental-impact report on the lake, the city worried more about the nesting grounds of blue herons and other birds that stop on their way to other havens, even planning to construct small temporary ponds for them.

Maria

Alfred Mata, a city engineer heading the reconstruction, first heard of Maria at a public hearing in August.

"I didn't catch on to what a big issue this bird would be," Mr. Mata said. "I don't come across goose issues very often."

For years, locals noticed something unusual about a goose at the lake who pecked at homeless people to wake them and seemed to prefer human friends to avian ones, staying by the side of walkers and runners instead of joining the gaggles of other geese.

Maria's fame grew last spring, when the Los Angeles-based band OK Go began to scout Echo Park Lake for an 18-hour shoot that would be sped up into a four-minute music video. As the band set up, all the other geese in the park dispersed. But Maria stayed by the band as they filmed, biting through the skin of guitarist Andy Ross when he tried to shoo her away.

There was only one solution: Make her a star.

Maria became a constant throughout much of the video. In one of the final images, dozens of people formed a circle around the group on the side of the lake and spun rapidly. In the center stood a remarkably stationary goose.

"We were like, people are going to think we have a trained goose," Mr. Ross said.

It was around this time that Maria first formed her bond with Mr. Ehrler, who lives alone nearby on a hill below Dodger Stadium. A retired salesman, Mr. Ehrler, who never married, grew up on a former dairy farm in Kentucky with dogs, cats, an alligator and a pony—but no geese.

Mr. Ehrler has quit eating poultry since meeting Maria, whom he calls "my best friend." From his scooter as she flies besides him, "I say, 'Maria' and she looks me straight in the eye at 30 miles an hour," he says.

At times, Maria won't return to the lake, so Mr. Ehrler guides her back to the park, where onlookers lock her behind a fence until he's gone. Once she was spotted blocks away waddling down busy Sunset Boulevard. A firehouse crew escorted her to the park in an ambulance.

As engineers prepare to start the $65 million rehabilitation project, they don't have a plan for local birds, many of whom Mr. Ehrler has named: "Coco," "the Gucci Twins," the "Gang of Four."

But Maria is a top priority now, say people involved in the discussions. She might end up at MacArthur Park Lake, a few miles away. On Thursday, a zoo biologist examined her and determined she'd be fit to stay and socialize with construction workers to satisfy her need for human contact.

Mr. Ehrler has his own idea: He'll get a U-Haul, put Maria in the front seat, and the two will migrate to Oregon or somewhere far away where they can walk. One city official cautions that, technically, Maria is property of the state.

The couple's fame grows. A waitress at a nearby pizzeria is working on a documentary about them. On Saturday, a group of 100 people plan to sing a send-up of "Maria" from "West Side Story" while marching around the lake with Mr. Ehrler and the goose.

"She's our biggest celebrity," said Sarah Fain, an Echo Park resident and TV writer.