A Random Rant: Goose Canada

The following is a short story that I wrote for my Canadian Literature Class. Enjoy!

Goose Canada

The majestic Canada goose (or goose Canada, as it is called in the country of its namesake) flies from the northern reaches of Ontario, all the way down into South Caroline. She is a symbol of hard work and steady parenting for travelers and mothers alike. Each summer she bares a clutch of young from tiny eggs to full-sized adolescence, and after months of constant vigilance in protecting and feeding her young, she still has strength and conviction to show them the way south for the winter, so that one day each of them may do the same with their young. That is, each of the girls.

The boys are another matter. The father Canada goose is no less majestic than the mother, but it is only when faced with the pangs of parenthood that he takes up his end of the marriage bargain and leads by example, for it is then that his genes are at stake. The father, always punier than the mother, none-the-less guards the nest with the same vicious ferociousness, if not with the same attentiveness. It is he, more often than not, who must repel the marauding foxes, or drive off younger goose couples intruding upon his and his mate’s nesting grounds. Or, as the case may be, he is the one who must scout out a suitable nesting area for his mother-to-be bride, and attempt to expel the resident couple, who is always older, wiser, and stronger, and who have probably been there for several seasons. Later, when his offspring are of age and ready to leave the family and find mates of their own, it is he that must drive them away.

With the growing warmth over the past century, the pragmatic Canada goose has found it advantageous to chose a mild climate in the central Atlantic region of the United States (though they know nothing of the imaginary boundaries drawn by humans). They reside near the middle of their usual migratory flight-path year-round, flying north or south, as the occasion may be, only by a few degrees, and only when the need of food or the ancient love of flight compels them to it. It is in the mild climate of Northern Virginia that one particular goose family can be found as it is nestled, sound asleep, on the island of an artificial pond in the middle of a small horse ranch. It was early morning, and fall was slowly approaching, and the nights were already growing longer and the days, obviously, shorter.[*]

The youngest of the family wakes up, completely oblivious to everything about the length of nights except for the length itself, and perhaps the cold chill associated with it. This year had been a bad one for the family on the island. The food was plentiful, but so were the foxes. Originally numbering nine, the family was gradually cut down to only three: the mother, the father, and one girl goose. Her father had not been able to repel so many marauders, and the foxes had picked her sisters and brothers off one by one, until only she was left. She was only spared because she had lasted long enough to grow to a size too big and threatening for a mere fox-meal. Now, because she no longer had competing sisters and brothers to contend with, she has grown to an enormous size. She was as big as a farm turkey, which is absolutely gigantic according to the Canada goose standards of measurement.[†]

However as lucky this young goose was to be alive, she had not escaped the foxes completely unscathed. One night, when she was only nearly fully grown, an especially mean and vicious fox had crossed the distance between the island and the mainland to visit upon the unsuspecting goose family as they slumbered. The fox had been driven by bloodlust to swim the uncomfortably warm, still, murky and smelly pond water. He had already devoured one of the boy geese only three days before, and another boy a week before that, and who knows how many more during the course of the summer. With the faint smell of goose still on his breath, the fox stole to the island as quietly as possible. In previous days he would never have dared to assail the goose family island, but the longing for goose meat consumed him, and he was no longer able to contain himself. Still, the fox remained cautious, for although he was temporarily blinded to the risks of his endeavor, the tasty prize was too good to lose to careless blunder.

When he reached the island he could hear the even breathing of sleeping geese. This rhythmic sound filled him with eager delight. Now was the time to use the cunning that is so commonly attributed to foxes.[‡] He did not strike immediately, but instead waited and listened to the breathing. He was listening for the shortest and highest breath: the breath of the last of the young. And there she was! He could tell that she was nestled between her mother and her father, sound asleep. This was a set-back, for she was the only goose he could possible kill, and there she was, protected on both flanks. He would have to use his tasty albeit cunning brain to formulate a strategy. Obviously (to him, the fox, not to us), he must attack from the front and be sure to bite the neck on his first try, for only then would he kill her quickly enough to make a fast getaway. He would also have to attack on the side of the father, for he is smaller, less wary and less vicious than the mother.

So the fox listened to the rhythmic breathing once again, this time trying to discern the father goose from the mother goose. And there he was, on the right hand side. The fox was delighted that he was already, by chance, in the perfect position to strike (though it was truly chance that brought him hence, the fox attributed his prime position to the massiveness of his cunning: so crafty that he instinctually outsmarts himself to his own advantage—though if he were truly smart he’d know that cunning and instinct are really opposites.

The fox crouched and prepared to spring, waiting only long enough to take aim. He wanted to attack with a balanced measure of force, so that he could easily grab the young goose’s neck and run off to the other side of the island without having to change direction and thus lose momentum. He then lunged forward, so sure of his cunning and so confident of his position and abilities that it did not immediately register in his brain that he missed spectacularly. By mere chance (that the young goose attributed to luck, or to some higher power, and not to her cunning) his prey had been positioned between her mother and father such that her left wing, and not her neck, was exposed to the fox’s bite. He mistakenly grabbed the wing without knowing he had missed, and it was not until the young goose resisted his pull that he finally figured it out. His momentum was sure, however, and he managed to tear the wing right off at the elbow. But the snag before the tear slowed him down and changed his direction, so that before he even hit the ground he had turned 180 degrees. He landed, still running, but now he was headed straight back into the goose family.

By this time the mother and father had woken up and divined that something was wrong in the form of a fox. The mother flew into a savage rage fueled by months of frustration at the loss of her other young. She threw aside the useless father, who would only get in the way, and assaulted the fox head on. The fox was utterly helpless, for his mouth was stuffed with the dislocated wing. All he could do was attempt to get away in the direction from which he came. But the mother was too much for him. She beat her massive wings and used her powerful feet to drive the fox backwards across the tiny island. She pushed him through the saplings and the thorn bushes that did nothing to harm her, but that raked and tore at the fox’s skin with agonizing speed and ease. She pushed him into the water, and his feet got caught in the mud, and she kept pushing and pushing, and soon he could no longer stand. The mother used her bulk to drive him father in and pushed him under the water. The fox thrashed about wildly, but this exhausted him, and he drowned.

A month later the wing stub had healed, but the young girl goose would never be able to fly. It was in this condition that, as I said before, the young goose woke up to greet the early morning that came perceivable later and colder than the week before. She was the first to wake, and was therefore disinclined to leave the island nest, for she would be all alone. She could hear, however, the clang of a metal gate, and she knew that the family of humans in the house on the hill was feeding the family of horses in the field. Like the horses, the young goose had learned to associate the clanging of the gate with food, for the family on the hill would often dispense food for their island neighbors. And sure enough, there was the bright red gourd-shaped object that the family on the hill used to extract food and pass it amongst themselves and to the horses in their stalls. Upon examining the odd object one day when it was left carelessly in the field, the young goose discovered that it was as hard as her own bill, and she concluded that this family on the hill was a strange, featherless, flightless family of geese, with only one bill to share between them.

That morning it was the youngest girl that was feeding the family in the field.[§] The family on the hill always fiercely protected the family on the island whenever the occasion arose, and fearlessly drove away all foxes, cats, dogs and vultures that came too close. Thus the young girl goose felt safe leaving the nest whenever there was a member of the family on the hill around. This is what she did without a moment’s hesitation, for the food the family on the hill offered was the sweetest, most delicious food she had ever tasted, and she wanted to have her fill before her parents arrived.

However, the tread of an ungainly goose, though very soft by human standards, does not go unnoticed by a wary goose mother, especially when that tread is the tread of her only child. The mother awoke and followed her daughter closely, and they headed to the barn for some oats. It was only the absence of comfortable goose-warmth that caused the father to wake up, and he followed a few yards behind, quickly trying to catch up, but not knowing where he was going. The boy-girl saw the goose family approaching and promptly ignored them. It was much more important to have the horses locked away in their stalls and eating than it was to attend to the geese. If s/he walked over to the family now with a scoop of oats in his hand, his efforts at feeding the horses would be completely undermined, for the horses would follow him/her, seeing only the scoop in hand.

The family on the island knew that the family on the hill never feed them at the barnyard without first shutting the family in the field away. The family on the island appreciated it, for although the family on the island and the family in the field got along very nicely, and often grazed together under the hot sun, providing moving shade for the family on the island, the family in the field went wild at the sight of oats, and would drive the family on the island away, even for just a few dirty bits from off the ground. The boy-girl walked over to the family on the island when his duties were finished, carrying a bucket and the scoop-bill. The parents in family on the island still did not fully trust the family on the hill, for they looked just like any other human, and many other humans were dangerous. But the young girl goose did not yet know of the evils of humans, and only showed fear because her mother and father did. Her mother and father did the customary threatening his and bowing of the head, and the boy-girl greeted this by hissing back, at which, of course, the geese became confused and worried in an instant. It was when the mother and the father began backing away that the boy-girl threw out the oats for them to enjoy. All confusion and worry was gone as soon as it came, and they proceeded to devour the sweet feed with wanton haste.

The boy-girl promptly plopped down beside the goose family and watched them watch him watch them eating. The boy-girl had grown fond of the goose family, and especially fond of the young goose with the broken wing, whom he, quite insensitive to the dignity of geese, called Stumpy (he was also quite sure that they could not understand him). The boy-girl had pieced together the story of that night with the fox fairly accurately. It was he-she, after all, who had extracted the bloated carcass of the offending beast out of the pond, with Stumpy’s wing still in its mouth. The geese had watched the entire extraction process, and Stumpy did not recognize the disembodied wing as her own, though the goose family had been startled when this gigantic, bloated fox began to move again.

It was in the nature of the boy-girl to forget his duties, and he sat for quite some time, watching the geese watch him watch them fidget. For they had long since eaten their meal, and now stood around wondering if they were to receive more. Only when one of the horses, agitated that he had been left in the stall for so long, began to nuzzle the door hatch, did the boy-girl come to his senses and go back to work. The family on the hill was startled by his abrupt departure, and so the chance of a second meal was completely driven out of their minds. Stumpy began milling around in the grass, nibbling on the lower stems, though she was no longer hungry. Her mother began to walk towards the horse gate, for the horses had now been set loose, and the grey mare was an old friend of hers. The father goose, out of habit, began to follow her, and Stumpy was left alone to pretend to graze. Though as she got older the effect of her imprinting had lessened, after a while Stumpy could not resist the evolutionary pull, and quickly she waddled over to her mother.

A few weeks later, when the wind began to blow the first prematurely red leaves off the trees, a scent filled the air that filled the nostrils of the family on the hill. Though it was still late summer, the scent of winter was in the air, and it worked the family on the hill into frenzy. Never before had Stumpy felt such an urge to fly. She flapped her wings in an agitated manner, and though she flapped them as hard as she could, she could only lift herself a few inches off the ground. Her parents had also felt the urge and agitation. They spent the entire day pretending to graze, but not eating anything, even the sweet oats that they coveted. By the end of the day the urge was too much for them, and they took off.

Stumpy was torn to pieces. Her imprinting, her drive to fly, her need of goose fellowship—all of these things were denied her. For hours she paced back and forth, looking to the sky. Then she became hungry, and forgot her parents a little. After her meal of sweet oats, of which she was able to gorge herself because she was the only goose around, Stumpy was a little happier, and she forgot her parents a little more. By the next day she had forgotten her parents almost completely, but the boy-girl often observed her following his dog and other goose-colored objects. Stumpy spent that winter quite comfortably, wandering from farm to farm in her own sort of migration, enjoying the mild Virginian weather, which was at least as warm as summer in northern Ontario. Stumpy returned to the horse ranch the next year around the same time as her parents. Though they did not recognize each other, the father goose was reluctant to drive Stumpy away, and Stumpy was allowed to remain on the fringes of goose society.

[*] That is to say, this is obvious to you and me, but not to the Canada goose. If we could say to them, “The nights are growing longer,” and they could understand each word and could interpret our anthropomorphic attributes of nights being alive and being able to grow longer—and so long as we never told them that nights also grow shorter, thus confusing their little minds with the daunting subject of semantics in the field of language and logic—and thereby understand our meaning of the sentence, it still would never occur to them to say, “And the days are [growing] shorter.” They would not connect these two events with the same astronomical phenomenon, and therefore they would not connect them with one another. And if they did connect them (somehow), it would merely be a temporal connection based on the fact that one event immediately follows the other, and not a causal one.

[†]As big as a small swan, by the measurement standards of goose Canada.

[‡] Though he knows nothing of this, and believes himself the only of his kind with any brains—not that he knows anything about brains, except that they taste good.

[§] That is to say, it was the youngest boy, but to the young goose in whose family the females were bigger than the males, the youngest boy’s size was a sure sign that he was a girl.