L'HISTOIRE DE VENDREDI
I got the goslings at the Hemlock Agway, two of them, from the same place I got the chicks. Two gangly yellow birds with funny bills and webbed feet, stumbling over the yellow and red balls of fluff and down all around them in the big cardboard box next to the bookshelves in the fireplace room.
A heat lamp dangled above them, keeping them warm, and my kids knelt for hours peering into the box, petting them and feeding them mash.
I had wanted chickens for years, like the ones I had when I was a boy, a little flock I kept in my grandmother’s backyard, mismatched hens and a rooster, picking at bugs and scratching in the driveway dust. It was probably instinct, an impulse to agriculture, centuries old, pulling at me.
And I wanted my children to have that.
I wanted them to have responsibilities and chores, things that had to be done and duties to be discharged.
So I went to the Agway and got 25 chicks, like I’d discussed with the family, and I saw the goslings there, next to the ducklings and the poults, and I liked them. And I thought that we’d never had a Christmas goose and could probably never afford a Christmas goose unless we raised our own.
And one by itself would be lonely and if it died we wouldn’t have one so I got two, two little goslings, and put them in the box with the chicks and took them home to grow under the heating lamp.
Eventually they went out back into the coop with the chickens, to lord over the corner of yard, picking bugs and scratching in the dust.
As the weeks passed and the chickens grew to full size the goslings just kept growing, a part of the chicken flock but much larger, twice as big, with long necks and a waddle. And we discovered an interesting thing about geese, they are smarter than chickens, almost as smart as dogs, it seemed. They seemed less driven by predictable instinct, more prone to personality and individuality.
And they were beautiful. Sleek, long, white, just great looking birds. They were the class of the flock and we all became very fond of them.
One night in the dark we heard a great fuss from the coop, honking and clucking and honking and hissing, and we ran to see what the problem was.
A skunk had gotten in, intent on killing and eating a chicken, and it was trying to attack. The chickens were huddled in the corner and a goose stood warily in front of them, shifting one way and then the other while the second goose stood across the floor, directly in front of the marauder, hissing at it and striking at it with its bill. They were defending the chickens. They stood between them and danger, and used their size and their courage to protect the henhouse.
It was one of the most stirring things I’ve ever seen an animal do. It earned the geese a special place in our hearts. They were the heroes of the hen yard and every time anyone came over we told them the story and showed them the big, white geese.
They also became fond of us, and when we went out to tend them and the chickens they followed us everywhere we went and seemed genuinely attached to us. They were pets in the same way a dog would be a pet. Fun intelligent creatures that were a delight to have around.
But the plan had been Christmas dinner, and this mixed flock was created for one purpose, to teach responsibility and self-reliance and home production and where food comes from. And when teaching children it’s important to finish what you begin, to end up where you said you were going to end up. And Christmas dinner had to be Christmas dinner.
There was much discussion and heartache and even prayer before I went out there that day. The family had ultimately agreed with what had to be done, or what we felt had to be done, but I was the one who was elected to go out and actually do it.
I had a little club, a hardwood nightstick, that I carried into the backyard. As I approached the hen yard the chickens came to the fence conditioned to expect mash or cracked corn. The two white geese lorded above them intent less on food than on companionship. I went through the gate and threw corn for the chickens and walked to the middle of the enclosure as they scurried to eat it.
One goose stood to my left and the other walked along beside me, on the right. I got just out of its peripheral vision and stopped walking to let it get a little ahead of me and when it was I reared back with that club in my right hand and struck it a ferocious blow in the back of the head, right where it attached to the neck. The bird’s momentum and the energy of the blow pushed the goose forward into a lifeless hump a few inches ahead of where it had been.
I instantly wheeled to my left and raised the club again and the other goose stood there motionless. It came into my vision just as it was raising its gaze from the bird on the ground upward to my face.
And I swear that goose looked me in the eye.
I swear it looked at me with a broken heart, stunned and shattered by the betrayal, sickened at the realization of what was going on.
And it stood stone still as I brought the club down and killed it in an instant.
I skinned them out and gutted them and in an hour they were both in the freezer. We didn’t talk about it in the house and on Christmas we had goose, just like we’d planned. For a few years the down I’d saved for a quilt or a jacket sat in a box in the basement.
That’s the story of the geese we raised. I admired them so much. They taught me so much.
Especially in that instant, when I betrayed them. They were loyal to me, and I was not loyal to them. And sometimes I think about that, and it haunts me.
- by Bob Lonsberry © 2006
