Wild Geese in Autumn

By Ursula B.G. Kilner, Salisbury

Unlike humans, geese mate for life. In the past few weeks the geese that make their headquarters on and around Lake Washinee (also known as the West Twin Lake) have been flying in formations as small as two to as large as 30 or more. When there are seven (or some other odd number) it means mother, father and offspring goose are making a trial run.

The geese fly over my house all the year—which reminds me of one of my high school friends getting "bombed" by a bird as we walked home from school. My, how she ran home to take a shower! All the years I have watched birds flying, that hasn't happened to me or anyone I know, although I realize that mentioning this will be the signal for such an event to happen.

Some people don't like the honking of geese. Their honking as they fly makes me freer, and I thank them for that. Complaints about geese honking usually come from people who have lived all their lives in large towns or cities. Every morning when I walk my dogs, the railroad in Canaan moves into high gear with accompanying hoots as it shifts box cars up and down on both ends of the town. When I spent five weeks at Geer Memorial in Canaan recovering from hip replacement surgery, Cathy, with whom I shared a room, would comment when we heard that noise, "The world's coming alive again!" She was a delight to have as a roommate and now, sadly, has died.

Every sound means something to us. Before I kept my cats inside (they once had their own swinging doors, which are now nailed shut), the shriek of car tires either swerving or trying to stop made my heart skip a beat. I was sure one of the cats had been hit by a car. Then gunshots unnerved me—the land here is posted, but poachers (apparently) can't or won't read the signs. One of my cats got shot and somehow got home; his hind feet resembled snowshoes. How anyone could mistake a big golden cat for anything else mystifies me, except that it may have been shot in annoyance because there was nothing else to shoot at. Our garage doors were filled with bird shot at one time—they don't look like pheasant or turkey to me, and I don't need distance glasses.

As the geese flew over in larger and larger groups as the weeks passed, the trees turned from green to gold, rust, bright yellow, red, and sometimes mixtures of these colors on a single tree. I cannot help but feel sad, as this beautiful time of year is also the time of killing by hunters. Yes, there is hunting for deer, but remember that people have caused the deer population to explode, as the only predators of deer are wolves and we have killed the wolves off. (There is no record of a wolf ever killing a human!) Once the balance of nature is disturbed, unhappy things happen. In the late 1800s, if a person brought a pair of deer ears to the town hall, he (usually a "he") would get a reward. It didn't take long for boys to discover they could make a pair of "deer ears" cut out of rabbit ears.

Out west, wolves are being reintroduced into the wild. The men raising sheep are boiling with anger: they will, of course, have to put up fences to keep the sheep in and the wolves out. Although we have no wolves, coyotes have moved into our part of the world from the western states. The coyotes cannot bring down a full-grown deer, but they can do in a newly born fawn. The coyotes have killed and eaten house cats, chickens, ducks, etc.—all of these have to be fenced in (with high fences), meaning "free range" chicken eggs are produced by chickens living and scratching in an area defined by fences. So it goes with so many animals and birds: dangers have to be kept at bay. But geese fly and are rarely shot—as they, I am told, are tough eating. I guess if I were to choose to turn into a bird or beast, I would pick turning into a wild goose.