Swept from the corners of my mind…
My last job had me on the road a lot, visiting families in the area. One of my clients was a very busy farm Mom with an ill infant. I always admired her positive outlook and the way she managed a large, active family. I figured she could take on any task. The sounds of Autumn migration brings her to mind every year. Let me explain.
Late one spring I arrived at their mixed farm and was handed a bucket by an excited toddler. In the bucket was a very downy goose baby.
“Aww, how did you get a gosling?” I knew she didn’t have a chicken house and don’t remember any interest in poultry.
“My husband was driving across a field and there it was, lying in the dirt. There is no water near there for a mile on either side and we looked all around and didn’t see or hear any geese. We figured a coyote or fox dropped it.” Then the shoe dropped. “You have lots of pets. Will you take it?”
Well, I didn’t have a chicken house either, and I worked full time, so my initial answer was a resounding “no, thanks!” but the gosling had nowhere else to go, and once again I ended up with an extra critter.
Or I did for a while. My husband was home and the gosling needed fed multiple times a day, so it imprinted on him and basically ignored me from then on.. As it waddled around the trailer pooing and honking, I felt grateful that he was the daddy. Cleanup with HIS responsibility. But we both enjoyed watching the little guy grow. We tried not to get too attached, as it became apparent that we had a Canada Goose on our hands. As soon as it was able we would have to let it go.
While a house pet, Goose (yes, that was its name) was always following Cec, perching on his foot and generally being a shadow. The same happened outside. As Beloved worked around in the yard the bird was always nearby. When the geese started practicing for the fall flight, Goose became excited. He would flail his wings and honk when they flew by, but he always returned to his “parent”. After several weeks his flails and hops turned short, awkward flights. We were delighted but knew it was likely we would lose our now enormous child soon.
And that is how it happened. After a few days of practicing circling the yard, Goose took off after a flight of his relatives. We watched with concern, unsure how they would treat him. When he didn’t come back, we knew that we would never learn its fate. It had grown from a downy gosling to a large, shiny Canada Goose. We had cleaned slick, slimy goose poop and water that had been splashed all over the kitchen. We would never even know its gender because even Canada Geese seem to have a hard time telling each other apart. We knew it put dogs and cats into fear, and seemed to understand that it belonged in the sky, but we were sad that we would never know if it made the transition safely.
Except…. For several years, during migration, one goose would circle the farmyard, and circle Beloved if he were out, and then take off. This was odd because we had lived under the fall flight path for Canada Geese for decades. They would land in the fields across the road, but we had never noticed any in our yard or on our pasture. But one goose would appear each year and we hoped, in our heart of hearts, that it was the same goose, just checking in with his foster dad.
This fall goose never landed but it usually flew within ten feet of my grinning farmer most years. It would circle him once or twice then take off. At one of the later visits Cec realized there was another goose nearby, but it wouldn’t come close at all. It just hung around while the other goose circled and occasionally honked. Then they were gone.
Was this our Goose? Logically, it seemed highly unlikely. But that bird did love that man while it was in our household, so I choose to believe that it safely transitioned to a flock, avoided hunters, gained a mate, and still kept us in his heart, too.
Cathy Bendle finds humor in the quirks of everyday life, from training teachers to dodging housework. When not writing, she’s either laughing at her pets, frantically Googling for her work assignments, or playing on her iPad.
