Come May, Chelsey Rae Hill will celebrate the 28th birthday of her most cherished childhood friend.

There will be pizza, there will be watermelon and there will be reminiscing aplenty.

It doesn’t sound sound so exotic, maybe, until you learn that the birthday boy here is an Emden goose who has lived much longer than most geese of his breed.

The goose’s name is Yellow and he’s been with Hill longer than just about anyone else in her life. At 28, Yellow has lived a good 10 years longer than Emdens are expected to.

In 1998, when Hill was 7, her father brought home some baby geese from the Paris Farmers Union. Hill explains why she named her favorite one Yellow.

“I was 7,” she says. “And baby geese are yellow.”

The animals didn’t just become pets, they became a way of life. Her playmates.

“They just became my babies,” says Hill, now 34 and engaged to be married.

Yellow was always Hill’s best bird pal. But there were plenty of other geese around over the years to keep him company, even as Hill passed through her teen years and into adulthood.

“We added more to the flock over the years,” she says. “I, of course, didn’t know I would have to buy a house that was suitable for geese. No idea they could live that long.”

They don’t all live that long, to be sure. Many of the other geese died along the way and it wasn’t only Hill who grieved for them.

“When Yellow’s best friend died I thought he would die,” Hill says. “He stopped eating. He wouldn’t stand up. For a week I carried him back and forth from the pen to the yard with water. Finally started bringing home pizza every day for him. That’s the only thing he would eat until he was able to get up and move on.”

Hill and Yellow lived most of their lives in Litchfield. Yellow would sleep in a small barn never far away from the girl who loved her. Wherever Hill went, her beloved goose was never far behind.

“My parents have framed photos when we were kids on the wall,” Hill says. “Mine is me and Yellow.”

Everybody who knows Hill also knows Yellow.

“I call her the ‘Bird Mom,'” says Mitchell Clyde Thomas, who has known Hill since she was in the nursing program at Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston. “Being a chicken and duck guy in my younger days, I was always fascinated with her bird tales. I can’t believe Yellow the pizza-eating Goose is as old as he is. Chelsey is an amazing caregiver. Any patient — man, woman or beast — would be lucky to have her.”

When Hill and her fiance made the move to Winslow two years ago, adjustments had to be made to bring Yellow and other pets along — Hill actually got a loan to build a barn for her critters, which include turkeys, ducks, chickens, two dogs and a python.

All the birds get along just fine, Hill says: “they mourn for each other when one passes,” she says — but they don’t care at all for the snake. Fortunately, Yellow has something of a body guard in a German Shepherd that grew up with the birds and who grew to love them.

Her fiance, Jay Comeau, loves the geese, too. He’d kind of have to since the birds have become such a part of Hill.

Their routine is simple. Hill works nights so Comeau takes care of the birds in her absence, feeding them and letting them in or out, depending on what the goose wants at that particular moment.

“At first I was skeptical about the birds,” Comeau says, “but now I’m up every day feeding them, giving them water and just trying to get goose hugs. However, I have not been very successful — I frequently get bit. But I love them and I’m happy to carry Yellow in and out every day.”

When May comes around and it’s time to celebrate Yellow’s birthday, the birds will get pizza and watermelon, as they do on Christmas and Thanksgiving each year.

But this time around, Hill is a little nervous that Yellow might not make it to his next birthday. The symptoms of the bird’s advanced age have started to settle in.

“He’s been slow the last few years,” Hill says. “He’s recently blind so he lives mostly inside with us and visits his friends during the day.”

Everyone in Hill’s orbit knows of Yellow’s slow decline. And while they hold their breaths and wait for May, they also know that Hill herself will one day be in mourning for her oldest friend.

“I’ve had a lot of people reach out,” Hill says. “Everyone knows my geese. We all grew up with them.”

Geese tend to bond with people, Hill says, so she is used to having them in her personal space. But these days, Yellow doesn’t socialize so much.

“He just kind of hangs out and eats,” she says. “We knew it was coming but it’s hard to watch a friend you loved for 28 years struggle.”

The plan going forward is simple.

“Lots of pizza and warmth,” Hill says. “Let’s make it to May, my friend.”