Gandery Gandery Goose, a Story from Long
Ago.
By Barbara
E. Moss
© - 2006, 2007.
Barbara E. Moss
Two fuzzy
roughly oval shapes stand behind my daughter in the old photograph. It’s her
second birthday and she is wearing the light tan dress embroidered with a
multitude of variously hued flowers that her grandparents bought for her in
Spain. She is now thirty-six, but this snapshot of her, my adorable toddler,
sits on my desk and I see her little again every day. The two fuzzy shapes are
half grown goslings, named for their intended ends--Thanksgiving and Christmas
Dinner.
Geese, you know,
make excellent watchdogs, act as lawnmowers, and fertilize your grass as well.
We got wind of this information from a book we read as new initiates to the
country life. It seemed like an idea that would fly. Why push that lawnmower
around if you didn’t have to, and why not have a nice green lawn with no work,
and why not a “watchdog” to guard this beautiful maintenance-free homestead.
And so my
husband, being a professor of marine biology and having a great interest in
animal behavior, although no farm experience, acquired three, two ganders and a
goose all looking much alike. We enclosed them in a circle of low green wire
fencing of the sort used to mark flower borders. The whole circle could easily
be yanked from the ground and replaced where needed. They commenced chewing
down the grass. And they fertilized. I found them quite lovable since they
were sort of furry and very communicative. They baby-honked when I came near
their pen and set up a hue and cry as I walked away. Obviously they wanted
their Mom and I was she.
We moved their
pen around the yard. Soon the whole yard was fertilized but they could not eat
grass fast enough to forestall mowing. Also the fertilization process had
unforeseen consequences. Goose droppings like oak leaves are very persistent.
They simply do not decay very quickly and our entire yard was now slip-slidey.
Failures at two of their three jobs, they were penned up and we had to be
satisfied with the honk-alarm that they sent up when someone came by.
They were not
fully meal-sized at Thanksgiving. We had to eat a store-bought turkey for that
special meal. But poor Christmas Dinner became Christmas dinner. To my
husband’s memory he was not easy to pluck ---or is it pick? Hunters pick ducks
and farmers pluck chickens, but what do they do to geese? My memory tells
me--well, the turkey’s job is not at risk.
That left us
with the unnamed goose and the remaining gander, Thanksgiving Dinner. They were
nicely penned in a large yard. When spring rolled around the goose built
herself a nest, laid eggs, and settled comfortably down to await the hatching of
her family. Then “Thanksgiving Dinner” also shuffled around in the dirt and
sat. Close observation revealed that “he” too had a clutch of eggs and
expectations! Those two birds sat and sat, but never did a gosling hatch out.
So much for “book-larnin’.” Sandy had executed our only gander!
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