Loose as a Goose

Looking back, I wonder how Kim and I could have thought it was a good idea. Oh, I remember the rationale: my father-in-law, Bill, wasn’t well. He lived alone. He spent hours at his window with binoculars. He was a bird watcher, and he had a pond. Wouldn’t it be nice if he had four pretty white geese to watch. Geese that stuck around even after the Canada geese had flown south for the winter.

Because it happened that a guy, an acquaintance of Kim’s, a tax dodger who’d been caught and was heading off to pay his debt to society in a way significantly more intrusive than simply paying his taxes would have been, needed a home for his four white geese. The dodger was going to be gone for a long time.

Kim and I imagined the stately fowl gliding across the surface of the pond. How beautiful they would look, pure white against the dull green water. Large enough to be seen from the house, even without binoculars.

“Let’s do it,” I agreed.

We climbed into Kim’s purple pickup, a battered old Ford that she had painted herself with a brush, and drove to the dodger’s homestead. He lived in a sod-roof hut concealed in a small woodlot. The sod roof, Kim explained, was intended to make the house invisible from the air.

“You know, satellites and helicopters. He figured if they couldn’t see him they couldn’t tax him.”

Okay then.

The dodger came outside and regarded us from his wooden porch.

“Got something to tie their feet with?”

Kim had a coil of rope on the seat beside her. She showed it to him.

He turned his head to spit.

“Hold on.”

When he returned, he was cutting clothes-line into lengths. Tossing the pieces in our direction, he asked, “You done this before?”

“Sure haven’t.”

“Okay. You want to watch their wings. They can do some real damage with them things, so hold ’em away from you. And their heads too. They bite like a bitch. And grab their feet so they can’t kick you.“”

I was counting — wings, heads, feet — and it sounded to me like a body would need three hands to catch a goose. But I kept my silence.

“Where are they?”

“Third field. You gotta cut through the woods first. There’s a gate. You been out there?”

“Uh uh.”

“Guess I better go along.”

With that he vaulted over the side of the truck, landing lightly in back.

Kim followed a two-track trail through the woods and beyond to a series of fenced fields. We knew we had reached the third field when an immense white gander charged the truck.

Three hens sidled toward the far corner of the field, hissing. The dodger was on the ground before the truck stopped and Kim wasn’t far behind. The gander gave way. Grabbing a hank of line, I ventured into the field.

“Head ’em off,” the dodger muttered.


He circled left, Kim to the right. Feeling very much like I didn’t belong here, I kept the center.

The geese retreated as far as the fence would allow, the hens milling and muttering behind the hissing gander.

The dodger halted. So did Kim. For a moment, they formed a tableau — on the one hand the stocky macho, on the other the slightly ragged, barefoot femme, in the center four white birds, gracefully, rightfully alarmed. I longed for a camera.

The dodger tackled the gander. In a flurry of feathers and cacophony of honking, he folded its wings behind its back with one hand while neatly catching the feet with the other. His knee kept the bird’s head out of biting range.

“Truss it up!” he barked.

As Kim rushed to tie its feet together, three immense and outraged hens charged straight toward me. I braced, focused on the nearest one and tried to make it look like I tried to catch her, though of course I had no intention of doing any such thing. 

Spitting his disgust, the dodger thrust the gander into the cab of the truck.

Determined to redeem myself, I herded the geese back toward Kim. With a mad grin she dove, dropping her body on top of a bird and wrapping it in a bear hug. The technique wasn’t as precise as the dodger’s, but it worked.

I rushed to truss the feet, then carried the goose to the truck. This wasn’t as easy as “carried the goose to the truck” might sound. It meant holding my arm rigid, straight out from my shoulder so the goose couldn’t batter me with its wings or bite me. It must have weighed 30 pounds and by the time I reached the truck where the dodger waited, I was gasping and sweating, and my arm felt like it was ready to pull from it’s socket.

The dodger opened the truck door just wide enough. I pushed the hen inside. He slammed the door closed and grinned.

“Two down, two to go!”

I was redeemed.

Rubbing my hands together, I felt something slimy. Goose shit.

By the time I carried the last bird to the truck, that vehicle fairly vibrated with avian rage.

“What next?”  I asked the dodger.

We were buddies now.

“Now you take ’em home.”

“But we have to put them in back — ”

“Do that and they’ll fly out. They’re birds, remember?”

“Couldn’t we tie them all together or something?”

“Sure, if you want ’em to commit group hari-kari.”

I could tell from the look on Kim’s face that she hadn’t thought this through, either. But she recovered quickly.

“Ready for a wild ride?”

The dodger vaulted into the back.

“Drop me at the house, will ya?”

“I should probably ride back there too,” I began.

“Uh-uh. No way.”

I should have known. Fighting my way into the tempest, I wrestled two birds to the floor where the tight space and a foot on each back restricted their thrashing. Somewhat. Kim helped me position the others on the bench seat beside me, one under each arm. With my hands, I held their heads down and away.

“Drive!” I ordered. “Hurry!”

She hit the gas. The truck bounced. The geese struggled and I strained. At the house, she slowed just enough to let the dodger jump out then floored it, fish-tailing onto the road. Amidst all the lurching, the goose on my right worked its head free and nipped my thigh.

I howled and swore.

Kim whooped. She was having a great time.

I strong-armed the bird back into submission and tried to glare at Kim but started to laugh instead. The geese lost no time exploiting my weakness. Kim shrieked as the one next to her freed a huge wing.

“Ow! Dammit Lorraine!”

I did my best, but —

“Settle down, you big fat — ow!”

The goose on my right had worked its wings free too.

“Drive faster!”

We were in town now and I glimpsed an elderly couple turning to stare. I can only imagine what they saw.

By now, eight immense wings were flapping inside that truck, four beaks were biting, and the honking was almost loud enough to drown out our screams. How Kim managed to keep the truck on the road is beyond me.

The purple pickup careened through New Troy and out the other side, over the river, around the curve, and on down to Hanover Pond.

As soon as the truck stopped, I pushed one goose toward Kim — let her tangle with it! — while I escaped from the truck with another. Doing the operation in reverse should have been a piece of cake, but the bird was steaming mad and my hands were slippery with shit.

Finally I succeeded and the goose, hurling a final invective, escaped to the pond. One by one, we hauled the others from the truck and cut them loose, alternately howling and swearing. Finally, as the last goose made a dash to the sanctuary of pond and flock, we dropped to the ground, still howling, only now it was with laughter. 

And here came my father-in-law, Bill. The man for whom we’d undertaken this ordeal.

Sauntering down the hill with his crossword pencil behind his ear, he stood over us and shook his head. Our clothes, arms, hair and faces were streaked with goose shit. We were lying on the ground, overcome with laughter and exhaustion.

“What the hell have you done?” he asked.

“We brought you a present,” Kim announced.

He shook his head, turned, and sauntered back up the hill.

He never mentioned the geese to us, and if one of us brought them up, he would only shake his head.

But he kept those geese for years. Bought cracked corn that he’d scatter on the bank of the pond every morning. Waited in the spring, watching through his binoculars, for the moment when they would lead their chicks from their nests in the swamp onto the open water of the pond. Noticed when a chick disappeared, victim to a snapping turtle or hawk.

And when Bill was gone, the geese were still there. Still honking. Still hissing.

Still loose.