Loving the Loathable (Pt 1) Geese
Tags: Nonfiction, Animals, Lockdown, Humour, Essay

Date: May 26th 2020

I write this with a goose on my lap. A gander more specifically, as ‘goose’ refers to the female of the species. I have four geese, and think them wonderful. Their brazen malice towards anyone and everything is hilarious, and provides a much-needed lesson in humility for our species. When people first hear of my geese they usually recount traumatic childhood memories of being chased or bitten by an ornery member of the species (There’s a reason pinching someone on the bum is called “goosing” them) Popular opinion of the species tends towards the negative, running the gamut from fear, to disgust (a goose defecates, loudly and extravagantly, about once every 8 minutes) to unabashed loathing. Having never been humiliated by a goose myself I find everyone’s tales of woe hilarious.

Acquiring these geese was a very deliberate process. I didn’t have the dubious honor of inheriting these geese with a bit of land, nor did I wake up one morning to find a delinquent gaggle squatting resolutely in my pond. Conversely, my usual strategy when I want something (particularly if it’s an irrational desire) is to research it compulsively until I’ve spent enough time and energy that to not go ahead and procure the thing would mean I’ve wasted days of my life. Whether or not it’s a good idea is a problem for my future self. Having become a virtual goose expert, it would be irresponsible to not actually acquire the damn things.

My geese are Pilgrim Geese. They are an endangered species hailing from the West country, notable for being the only goose species that are sexually dimorphic in appearance; females are brown, males are white. This was part of the reason I chose them. The usual method for determining sex in geese involves everting their cloaca, the multi-purpose opening that serves as the intestinal and urinary vent and sexual organ (a very efficienct organ, do not google it) a prospect I don’t particularly relish. I ordered four eggs online from a goose breeder, who, by virtue of her hobby is by conventional standards, is clearly insane.

Incubating goose eggs is not an exact science. It seems surprising, given how domesticated they are, but compared to chickens which are hatched on industrial scales no one has seemed too interested in finessing the art of producing massive numbers of geese. It might qualify as a national security threat if they did. Consequently, every article, forum and blog post gives slightly varying instructions for their incubation, with most recording successful hatch rates of around 70%, far less for eggs that have endured the rigors of shipping.

Luckily for my eggs, the following 3 weeks of incubation coincided neatly with the government lock-down meaning that I could devote myself to obsessively turning, weighing, misting, and candling the eggs, experiencing sleepless nights when convinced I’d inadvertently murdered them in their shells, and generally displacing all my COVID-19 related anxiety onto them. Nevertheless, three days ahead of schedule I, rather painlessly, had four goslings. I was impossibly smug. I sent a photo to the breeder, one insane person to another, who congratulated me on my success.

They were irresistible. Coated in a layer of butter-yellow dandelion fluff, with enormous paddle feet, and a high pitched peeping whistle that gave no indication of their future perplexed honks. Most gratifyingly of all, at least at first, was their blind loyalty to me. They stumbled over themselves, miniscule wings outstretched as they raced to keep up, their clumsy feet pitter-pattering. They arranged themselves in the nooks and crevices of my elbows and knees when I sat down to read, heads nodding and stretched out in the unselfconscious sleep of babies. I baked a cake with them nestled in my apron pocket. I gave them swimming lessons in the tub.

Of course there are some negatives to bear in mind. If, like me, you inexplicably decide to rear your goslings in the house, be aware that they will rapidly outgrow whatever accommodation you devise for them, apparently to spite you. They defecate at an amazing rate, so quickly that you wonder how their tiny bodies are able to snatch any nutrition at all from the food that speeds through them with the velocity of a train. Like noisy, poorly-behaved children they will refuse to go to bed, preferring to squabble loudly and stampede around their enclosure at all hours. They will stage a dirty protest every night without fail, with no apparent goal in mind. Their loyalty to you, so endearing in some circumstances, turns into a shrill and repetitive peeping as soon as you have the audacity to leave their sight. It came as a surprise even to myself that they might just be some of the favourite animals I have ever owned.

They are enormously entertaining. They have the confidence of a wealthy white man coupled with the belligerence of a drunk. They master the menacing glare characteristic of their species at an improbably young age. They bulldoze everything in their path, terrorizing unfortunate pets of all species with their fearless curiosity. They are oblivious to social norms that require them to not defecate on guests. They are often affronted, and always keen to cuddle. They swim underwater, eyes open, with the speed and grace of penguins. They grow at an astonishing rate, and I regularly compare their progress to their shells (which I kept, naturally, as one does a baby’s first tooth) which they scrambled out of, damp and warm and already shrieking, so few days ago. Once they have fully feathered up they will move outside full-time, whereas now they only stomp across my lawn during balmy weather. I’m apprehensive that, like the hulkingly awkward emperor penguin chicks you see waddling shyly behind their parents, they will reach their full adult size before gaining their true feathers, but that’s a problem for my future self. As usual.