"Silly Goose!" is one of our family's favorite endearments, or insults, depending on your viewpoint, I guess. So I love the geese that live on our neighborhood lake, despite the fact that they're messy, loud, and very nearly hostile during nesting season. They've chased small children bearing bread crumbs, disturbed young romantics on spring picnics and let's not EVEN get started on the topic of, um, goose goo.
The geese tug at my heart. They only lay eggs in February and hatch a single brood a year, that shows up like clockwork each spring around May 1. Exactly May 1 this year. This spring we've got four couples sporting broods of four, four, three and two. And believe me, "strutting around" doesn't BEGIN to do justice to the daddy geese. They're alternately hilarious and alarming in their protectiveness.
New goslings are some of God's cutest creatures, but the cute wears off mighty quick, bless their hearts. They go from gobble-them-up-with-a-spoon adorable to gangly-angsty-misfit-teen faster than my kids go through strawberry cake so I raced to the lake just after sunrise (the only time the parents feel it's safe enough to have the little darlings out in public) yesterday to try for some decent pictures of the toddlers.
I'm amazed by the littlest of things - like how those tiny feathers blend so perfectly with the grass, leaves, pinestraw and red clay of northeast Georgia. How does God do that? To each and every goose that hatches? What colors are the feathers of Canada Geese in Canada, where there's no such thing as red clay?
And the parents - well, let's just say that we don't have anything on the geese. I bet they never lost a child in the ball pit before, or forgot which kid was at the YMCA and which one was at the afterschool progam. They hustle the little ones in and out of the water, waiting for the slowest to catch up. They boldly stare down traffic while the babes waddle across the street - and no one in our neighborhood dares to honk to speed them up. They share the responsibilities among all the parents - I always feel sorry for the two geese that get left with all the goslings at once while the other goose couples go off and what? Have goose cocktails? Listen to jazz in some quiet hole in the wall? Just grab a nap? Who knows?
Once in while you get shown the light
In the strangest places
If you'll look at it right
Sings The Grateful Dead in Scarlet Begonias
And darn, if there isn't some light, sitting there watching the geese. Friendship. Courage. Commitment. Silly, my ass. I pray to be more like a goose.
Once in while you get shown the light
In the strangest places
If you'll look at it right
Sings The Grateful Dead in Scarlet Begonias
And darn, if there isn't some light, sitting there watching the geese. Friendship. Courage. Commitment. Silly, my ass. I pray to be more like a goose.
