(~5 minutes to read)
I was watching a large skein of geese flying at several thousand feet last weekend.
The way the sun caught them made them look like molten silver. I tried photographing them (‘cause these days, it didn’t happen if there’s no pictures) but they were too high, and in any case, the moment was lost by the time I found them in the viewfinder.
Here’s the result anyway. It looks slightly better at 18 megapixels…
I decided to console myself by imagining what was going on up there.
“Who’s the… goose up front?” panted Doris.
“That’s Jasmine,” came the reply from her nearest neighbour.
“Not… hanging around, is she,” responded Doris. “At this rate… we’ll get ourselves in the… Geeseness Book of Records… for the fastest migration by a… flock of birds.”
“That’s her plan,” honked Willy from behind Doris. “She’s also planning to lead us on a mass divebomb at the President’s place as we pass over it. Now that will get us in the news… seven thousand, nine hundred and something geese dropping our loads on those beautiful black limos and Suburbans—we’ll make those puppies look like dalmatians!”
“Downright bloody childish, if you ask me,” retorted Doris. “Besides, does Jasmine seriously think we’ll be capable of synchronized guano-dropping after flying this fast for so long? We’ll be dehydrated, hungry, tired… our sugar levels will be so low we won’t be able to co-ordinate honking let alone…”
“We’re going to stop and rest a few hours north of the target,” offered Dodi. “Re-fuel, final briefing… you know the drill.”
Meanwhile, on the other wing of the “V” formation…
“Why are we flying so high?” whined Georgie, a yearling gander.
“Cause we like the view up here,” replied Maisie, his mother.
“Really?”
“No! It’s so we’re out of range of the anti-goosecraft guns down there,” honked Maisie. “Those humans track us during the migration season and come out in droves to blast us out of the air. They’re so adversarial. It’s not like we poop on their cars as part of a campaign for world domination. It’s just that they’re so shiny and irresistible. Before cars, the only shiny stuff available was knights’ armour; smaller targets and not nearly so many of them.”
Georgie’s dad joined in from behind.
“Y’see, son, we used to vary our departure dates to try and fool the anti-goosecraft batteries. But then they developed radar and heat-sensing and satellite imagery and Uff knows what else, so they’re always there, waiting for us. And that’s why we fly so high.”
“But Dad, what if they start coming after us in helicopters?”
“Hush now Georgie,” said Maisie. “Most helicopters don’t fly anywhere near this high, and if they did, then we have kamikaze geese who’ll fly into their engine intakes and bring them down.”
“How do you get to be a kamikaze goose?” enquired Petra, a good-looking yearling that Georgie had his eye on. Secretly, she was wondering if this might be a way to make the problem of Georgie’s unwanted advances go away.
Georgie’s Dad eyed her up and down. Maisie honked a wifely warning. Dad shrugged (not an easy thing to do in mid-flight) and answered his son’s question.
“Punishment for certain transgressions, like fraternizing with snow geese, withholding your guano over a cavalcade, or getting the skein lost while flying at the head of the formation.”
“So, if Jasmine leads us astray, she’ll become a kamikaze goose?”
“That’s right, dear,” said Maisie.
At the back of the formation, there was trouble.
“Keep up, will you?” honked Dave to his wife.
“That stupid goose at the front is going too fast!” puffed Tina, his bride of several seasons.
“BS, girl! You pigged out on barley at that last stop-off! You always overdo it, don’t you! ‘Enough’s as good as a feast’, I say. But not you!”
“If it’s there, you should eat it,” snapped Tina. “You never know when you’ll eat again.”
“The weight you’re carrying, you won’t need to eat for a month!” remarked Dave sourly. “I tell you, if those hunters catch us on the ground, it’ll be you they aim for. ”
“Because I’m pretty?”
“Because you’re fat!”
“That’s not fair!” whined Tina.
“Now quit your whining. We’re being left behind.”
“Why don’t you fly to the front, take the lead and slow us down a bit?” pleaded Tina.
“Do you really think I can catch up with Jasmine at this speed? Nobody’ll be able to take over until she’s ready to let them. You know how much harder it is to fly without the updraft from the bird in front to help… oh wait—I think she’s yielding the lead and dropping to the back for a rest.”
“Oh, great!” muttered Tina. “just what we need when I’m feeling so tired… a fit young goose telling me to go on a diet and take some pride in my appearance. You’ll be ogling her like a stupid teenager and…”
“Monogamy can only last so long,” said Dave, trying to hide his grin.
“She’s w-a-a-y out of your league, buster!” honked Tina.
“Hi Dave,” said Jasmine, taking a position just in front of the unhappy couple. Dave couldn’t believe his luck—she knew his name, and her tail feathers, which were easy on the eye, were right in front of him—he didn’t have to do anything to sneak a crafty peek.
Tina was incensed. Summoning every last ounce of energy she made her way in front of Jasmine and let loose with the only weapon at her disposal. She caught Jasmine full in the face; behind her, Dave suffered some collateral damage.
Blinded, Jasmine fell out of formation, and her efforts to clear her vision caused her to spin out of control.
“What the hell did you do that for?” yelled Dave, struggling to maintain control himself.
“Darned floozy! She got what she deserved!”
“And me?”
“Let’s call it a warning shot,” replied Tina. “If I ever catch you ogling the young birds like that again, you’ll get what she got.”
“After all,” she continued, “what’s ‘sauce’ for the goose is ‘sauce’ for the gander.”