Goose

Despite a few miscalculations in dramatic tone, Friday's opening-night performance of Christopher Wheeldon's Swan Lake was a visually stunning, emotionally wrenching and gorgeously danced way to inaugurate the Pennsylvania Ballet's 2005-06 season. Commissioned to celebrate the company's 40th anniversary, this Swan - set in a 19th-century Parisian ballet studio of the sort painted by Degas - is the company's largest and most expensive work, created by a sought-after choreographer.

From his Ford pickup, Bob Lohoefer looks into a glorious summer morning at George Washington Memorial Park in Plymouth Meeting. The sun is burning off the haze. Along a rolling expanse of lawn, a work crew sizes up a spot to dig a grave. Between two ponds, Lohoefer pulls off the path, gets out and looks down. The ground is dotted with green blobs. "This is a place that's supposed to be peaceful," Lohoefer says. "Not a place where you have to step in goose poop. " The offenders, about 40 of them, swim lazily in a pond about a hundred yards off. Lohoefer - with his partner, Joe Rocco, a few part-timers, and a pack of trained dogs - is one of the Goose Guys.

Who: Host, contractor, main dude on "I Hate My Bath," which airs at 10:30 p.m. Tuesdays on the DIY Network. Age: 38 From: Born in Northeast Philly, raised in Langhorne. Now: West Chester Growing up local: When not in class at Neshaminy High School, a teenage Devlin discovered his calling in the industrial arts. His favorite projects were birdhouses he built out of old pallets and sold at craft shows. "I nailed 'em together and called it a career," he said. On the show: Each week, he happy-go-luckily meets mostly Midwestern homeowners on a budget and turns their ugly bathrooms - you know the kind: raggedy fiberglass tub, teensy shower, stained drop ceiling - into a plumbed space in which anyone would proud to spend quality time.

The big guy in the clubhouse looked familiar enough, with his round face and bushy mustache. Sure enough, it was Rich "Goose" Gossage, one of the first preeminent closers, a hard-throwing reliever who saved 310 games in a big league career that lasted from 1972 through 1994. Gossage, who lives outside Denver, was on hand as part of an informational presentation by the Major League Baseball Players Alumni before last night's game. Gossage, 46, had some of his best years for the Yankees during a time when young Ricky Bottalico was growing up in Connecticut.

John W. Davidson's mother has always loved him, of course. And she was quite proud of Davidson, the fixed-income guru of One Federal Asset Management in Boston, even before he suggested late last year that she buy a Treasury bond maturing in 15 years or so. Such bonds are the ugly ducklings of the government securities markets, Davidson said. For a variety of tax and liquidity reasons - factors that are very important to traders and their institutional clients - the Treasury bonds maturing early in the next century are "just not an actively traded part of the market," he said.

The question: If the decoy cost $684,500, what's the real thing worth? The answer: It's worth $684,500 because the decoy is the real thing! A two-day auction of American waterfowl decoys at Sotheby's in Manhattan has set a world record for the sale of a hand-crafted wild goose. A decoy referred to as the "Outstanding Sleeping Canada Goose" carved in 1917 by artisan Elmer Crowell of East Harwich, Mass., fetched a staggering bid of $684,5000. "It was the most expensive decoy ever sold at auction, [and]

George School coach John Gleeson didn't know his football team would be playing a public school named Colonel Richardson in Federalsburg, Md., until a little more than a week before Friday night's game. But he had no complaints after his team returned to Newtown with its second straight shutout victory, 36-0. "Perkiomen School told us just before the season started they wouldn't have a team this season, so we started looking for a game," Gleeson said. "I thought we'd be playing West Nottingham (Academy, a Maryland school also on Perkiomen's schedule)

Life At The Top, winner of Belmont Park's Mother Goose Stakes in June, will carry highweight of 121 pounds in tomorrow's $100,000 Cotillion Stakes at Philadelphia Park. The Seattle Slew filly, trained by D. Wayne Lukas, drew the ninth starting gate in a field of 14 3-year-old fillies for the 1 1/16-mile, Grade III Cotillion. Pat Day was named to ride Life At The Top, but he also was named to ride the Lukas-trained Lady's Secret in Belmont Park's Marlboro Cup, which will go off about 70 minutes after the Cotillion.

The matchups have been set for five of South Jersey's six boys' basketball championships, highlighted by tonight's Group 4 final between Shawnee and Atlantic City. Three teams - Burlington City (Group 1), Haddonfield (Group 2) and St. Augustine (Parochial A) - will be trying to repeat as South Jersey champs. The South Jersey Parochial B final will be set up after tonight's semifinals: Moorestown Friends at Cardinal McCarrick, and McCorristin at Holy Spirit. Here is a look at the five other South Jersey finals, along with the Central Jersey Group 1 championship game: Group 4. Top-seeded Shawnee (25-1)

MAYOR STREET is quite an obstacle to progress. Here we are, ready to move on from business tax reform to improving property tax abatements. But the lame duck threatens to veto tax cuts hammered out last week. Miserable it is to be a Street duckling on Council as he lets you roast on the spit of public opinion. Letting others burn is the defining behavior of lame ducks. Mayor Duck frets that passing a tax bill before his budget address is "terrible, terrible public policy," reported the Daily News.