A Goose Enlightened

By Desiré Aguirre

Photos by Jenny Lopresto

The Canada goose that came to live on Herrmann Pond in Sagle for the last stage of his release into the wild was developmentally delayed.

We don’t know exactly what happened to him. Perhaps a well-meaning human found him when he was a wee gosling and started feeding him people food. Perhaps his goose mother, overwhelmed by too many goslings, left him up the creek without a paddle. Whatever the cause, he had become bonded to humans, and although he had feathers, webbed feet, and beady goose eyes, he thought he belonged with the two-legged critters that gave him bread crumbs. When he came to Herrmann Pond, he did not know how to fly or swim, and when he honked, his bark sounded more like a guffaw than a goose greeting.

When I got to know this bird, in my mind I called him Goofy Goose, but never to his face, as it is politically incorrect to name a wild animal. In company, I referred to him by the more generic TCG (The Canada Goose), because I knew the goal was to give him the opportunity to figure out his roots, in hopes that he would join a flock of geese and fly south in the winter.