The Lonely Goose

Growing up, I always had this thing about geese. Not quite a phobia, fear, or hatred of geese. Just this… thing. I saw geese as cute little ducks’ big ugly uncles; winged, incontinent rats that hiss and honk. They scared me a little and annoyed me a lot. Okay, maybe it was a phobia or fear, and somewhere in between dislike and hatred. Geese… Gross. You probably think I’m a little nutty, but you’d feel the same way if your family had been victimized by these feathered menaces the way mine has.

I’m the oldest of five boys. Kevin-Michael-Rusty-Timmy-Ryan; my parents would call our names out like a chorus, many times a day. Meal time, bed time, church time, school time, and times when we all got in the same amount or type of trouble (with the volume and pitch raised of course). We later added Carly-Christiana-Kellie, who got in significantly less trouble than the boys. There are eight of us, though now Timmy is Tim and Michael is Mike. And we were (and probably still are) a handful!

My Dad’s Uncle Dick and Aunt Arlene had a boat and a neat little summer place on Lake Berryessa, in between Sacramento and Santa Rosa, California, where we first learned to water-ski, and got comfortable bobbing up and down in the middle of a lake. (We did a lot more bobbing up and down than we did skiing). A couple summers, Mike, Rusty and I spent a week or so there, with the boat on the water morning, afternoon, and evening. We spent the time in between waterski sessions catching bluegill and swimming around the lagoon where the boat was docked, just outside their little cabin. This is where the goose trouble began.

One afternoon during our first summer at Dick and Arlene’s, Rusty and I were sitting on the beach while Mike was floating around the middle of the lagoon, wearing his big puffy orange PFD (we called them ‘life vests’ back then), just kind of hanging out. There were some ducks and geese and carp that hung out in the area, even a big ol’ rat we had seen hanging around the dock, but Mike was alone in the middle, minding his business, doing what a seven-or-eight year old would do, splashing and goofing around, the geese and ducks at the other end of the lagoon.

Suddenly, a goose swam straight for Mike, honking and hissing, like he was on a mission to destroy this creature wearing the puffy orange thing bunching up around his ears. Instantly, the goose began pecking and nipping at Mike’s head and face, his little arms hampered a bit by the life vest, unable to defend himself against this down-covered demon. The attacker flapped and jumped up onto Mike’s head and kept pecking away. Rusty and I yelled at the goose, yelled at Mike, and started to wade into the water, trying to distract the attacker, but this mighty beast was determined—he poked and squawked all over Mike’s bobbing head, as he hollered out in terror.

“Go under, Mike, go underwater!” we hollered, to which he feebly replied “I can’t!” The vest was keeping him afloat, and he had no way to escape—the goose could outswim him, and was aggressively attacking for what felt like an hour, as we worriedly, tentatively kind of half-waded, half tip-toed towards him. Suddenly, a hero appeared.

Looking back, I remember him as a cross between Han Solo and a mulleted Matthew McConaughey. He had a beer in one hand, a cigarette in his mouth, and wore only blue jean cutoffs, the likes of which have not been commonly worn by men since about 1980. The kind where the pockets hang way below where the shorts-part ends. The kind that make John Stockton’s purple Jazz shorts look like capri pants. Anyway, I digress, distracted by the memory of Han Solo McConaughey’s hauntingly short shorts…

Our hero coolly strode out to the middle of the lagoon, water about up to his chest, and said, “Let me show you guys how to handle these suckers.” Not spilling his beer, not losing his cigarette, he continued, narrating as he did his work. “First, you grab ‘em by the neck, then you swing ‘em around a bit, and then you give ‘em a good toss. That’s all there is to it.” We watched in awe as he did exactly as he described, then strutted back to his shady porch. The goose flew a good ten or fifteen feet before landing in the water with a plop and swimming back to his end of the lagoon.

We yelled our thanks (completely in awe) and swam out to help Mike get back to shore. Although we’d been rescued by this guy, we were petrified to try his technique of goose-repellant—those things were mean and a whole lot scarier to a seven, eight, and ten year old. We spent the rest of that week steering clear of them. I wish I could say it was my last encounter with geese. It wasn’t.

I remember one time the whole family was walking around the big pond at Diablo Valley College (which both my Dad and I had attended for a while), and of course the geese were there, taunting and playing goose mind games with me. Cocking their heads sideways, looking at me with their big goose eyes, squawking and daring me to make a move. Stupid geese…

As we all went down by the pond, feeding ducks, looking for frogs or fish or anything wiggly, one of my younger brothers fell into the water, which was deep enough for him to get completely submerged. My dad instantly jumped in and yanked him out. Everyone was elated, glad to have saved him from drowning. Only I knew the real danger he had been saved from—being mauled by those hissing geese. (Weirdly, I remember the geese that day, and which part of the pond we were at, but not which one of the Michael-Rusty-Timmy-Ryan-Carly-Christiana-Kellie clan fell in the water). 

So yeah, I have a thing about geese. Or, should I say, had a thing about geese. Just like my childhood fear of mice (I’m talking a real phobia here), and the crocodiles that I knew swam around my bedroom floor when I shut my eyes at night, and my belief that it was scientifically possible (and actually pretty likely) that static cling in my sheets could combust and start a fire in my bed while I slept, I kind of evolved through and past those fears and worries.

Learning a bit about geese was probably a big factor in my getting over my fear-phobia-disdain-thing about geese. Geese are not solitary animals. They mate for life, and are monogamous, unless their partner dies, in which case they will find a new mate. Males are extremely protective of their territory (homes); the family units are tight. The goslings learn to swim and eat almost immediately after birth—pretty remarkable! The female goslings grow up and help take care of their younger siblings for a couple years, until they are old enough to choose a mate. The male goslings grow up and associate with other single males in the flock until they are old enough to mate, developing the social and practical skills they’ll need to be good fathers and husbands. And we’ve all seen how they fly in big V’s to share the workload of flight, to draft off each other, to keep an eye on each other and be sure everyone could see where the group was heading. We could learn a lot from geese.

Just a few weeks ago I took this picture as I walked to work. I go right past the waterfront downtown, which in the spring and summer is infested with geese—they are everywhere! In the spring and summer they eat grains and grasses. In the late autumn they eat the acorns that fall from the trees, and then they fly on, probably somewhere warmer, with more food to eat, always in big family groups. I imagine they’ll come back as winter thaws out a bit. But the other day, this goose was alone in the middle of a giant field, just looking around, honking softly, questioningly. Honk? Honk? Honk? But there were no other geese around to answer. This goose seemed to be lost.

As I watched this goose nervously honking for a few minutes, I thought back on a few experiences in my own life… The adventure with the mulleted hero and other goose encounters, of course. But also a few instances where my own children or I have been as lost (or more lost) as that lone goose in the field. One involved my daughter Annelise (whom we sometimes call Annie, because who has time for three syllables, right?) When she was about four years old, she got lost for around a half hour on a busy beach in San Diego—the longest half hour of my life. We were terrified; we notified the lifeguards, we sent some of the family back to the little house we'd rented in case she turned up there, we had some waiting near our blankets in case she found her way back to our spot. The lifeguards had an alert sent out to everyone—all the lifeguards for a couple miles were looking. What an awful feeling—giving a description of your child to the authorities, hoping she will be found, looking way down the beach for a blue and pink swimsuited girl with long, blonde braids.

The head lifeguard drove me up the beach in his jeep as we frantically looked for her. Finally, over a mile from where we had been hanging out together, I saw her holding the hand of a nice middle aged lady, also named Annie, as they walked looking for us or for a lifeguard. What a swing of emotion, to go from such fear to elation in an instant! I picked her up as she cried, both of us freaked out and finally calming a bit. Unless you have been in the same situation, you can’t imagine the joy and relief we felt as Darcie saw us driving up, learning her daughter was safe.

As I watched the lonely goose, I thought back to just a little over a year ago, when Liam was lost for a good hour or so in the Cascade foothills at Scout Camp. The boys were playing a variation of hide and seek, and let’s just say Liam was the champ! About thirty or forty minutes into the game I realized I hadn’t seen Liam in a while, and we got a little search party together. We were able to find him, but he had also gotten pretty shaken up in his ordeal—and gotten really scratched up as he had been scrambling around during the game, and while trying to make his way back. (That’s a picture of him a little while after he was found). I knew how he felt; I’d been lost before when camping too—each minute feels like an hour, you second guess everything, you don’t know anything with certainty any more.

In the cases of Annie and Liam, my kids had gotten lost because they had been alone, and wandered in the wrong direction, unknowingly, believing they were heading in the correct direction. I don’t know how this goose had gotten lost, but of course he had likely somehow wandered off on his own. After thinking of Annie and Liam, I thought of one more experience that made me think again of the importance of family, community, partnership and friendship in our journeys through life.

When I was sixteen, my family moved from our home in Martinez, California to a place in Concord, California. It wasn't far away, in fact I was actually closer to my high school and part-time job, but we would be attending church in a new building and with a different congregation. The first Sunday of each month at LDS (Mormon) services is like an open-mic format, where members of the congregation can go up and share their feelings about the gospel and their stories of faith and conviction (our ‘testimonies.’) On our last Sunday in that old home, I felt moved to stand up and speak, although I had no idea what I was going to say.

What struck me as I stood there, an awkward 16 year old kid in front of a few hundred people, was not so much a fear of missing my friends, sadness about seeing less of them, or worrying about how I’d fit with the new kids around our new home. Looking over the crowd, I was nearly overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude for all of the people who had helped shape, lead, guide and direct me through my teenage years—it was as if I was seeing for the first time everyone, all at once, who had ever done a single little thing to help me. I certainly appreciated the parents of my little circle, like the LeSueurs, Sinciches, Ortons, Bradys, Philips, and so on, who had always been great family friends and examples. On that day I was even more touched by those adult leaders and teachers who didn’t have kids my age, who reached out and served and helped me when they had no reason to, just doing it out of a sense of love and duty.

I tell my own kids about some of these leaders now, over thirty years after some of those amazing people worked with and taught me. I mumbled some thanks to those family friends and to people like the Lances, Berkoviches, Betts, Woolleys and Cadwalladers; the Smiths, Renshaws, and Widmers; so many great people who probably have no idea how much they shaped me and how they helped me stay with the flock. Nearly overwhelmed by gratitude and the love I felt from that big adopted family, I knew I was on the right path, truly understanding for the first time how God had a plan for His children, for our families. With new eyes, I saw all the people who had helped me so much.

That’s a lot of remembering to do in a few minutes, watching a lonely goose. He reminded me of how we’re all the lonely goose sometimes, and how we sometimes have the opportunity to help others as part of a flock. I wanted to help him, but wasn’t sure how. I want to believe he found his family, or they found him, because he did the right thing and stayed put. I want to believe he has a newfound appreciation for his mate or siblings or children, or whoever is in his own flock. I know he made me appreciate my own flock just a little bit more, and he made me fear geese just a little bit less.

Thanks to everyone who keeps my family and me flying in the right direction!