28 days ago, a Virginia Beach goose nested ten feet from my apartment door. I tried not to stare at her on my way in or out of the building. She never rose to eat; no mate came to feed her. An online wildlife site explained that she'd filled up on food prior to laying.
By the third week, though, she looked darned hungry. Not just that, but I'd become aware that her safety was continously at risk. One day a truck backed up on the lawn and two workers chainsawed most of the tree limbs around her. She didn't budge. I was a nervous wreck.
And who knew May weather in coastal Virginia could be so theatrical? Pelting, torrential downpours. Windstorms that lasted twenty-four hours. Nights below freezing. I woke at intervals, thinking of her out there braving it all with no cover. Some evenings, feral cats wandered along the bank of the stream not two feet from her.
Lawnmowers, joggers, and lengthy barking fests by un-neighborly dogs filled her days. If Fed Ex deliveries and the jarring sound of dumpster-lifts twice a week in the parking lot wasn't enough, a wood chipper was backed up onto the lawn for two days until the chainsaw and tree limb-removal project ended. I feared the wood chips might blind her. She knew the maxim, don't just do something, sit there.
By the end of the third week, I did something. I anxiously threw bread crumbs near her. She left three large eggs to eat them, and sat again. I tried again the next day, but a gander barreled up out of the water and I ran in the house. It relieved me to know he'd arrived. Goslings from other broods began to parade in the parking lot behind their parents. I prayed "our" eggs would hatch and end my obsessive misery.
Instead, more challenges arrived. She sat through two 85-degree days in which a family of five humans fished at the newly-cleared spot where she sat. They cast their rods over her head. I feared the children would take it further. She never moved.
Yesterday, she was gone. Her eggs were gone. Had I been right about those children?
Later in the day, she was back.
This morning, a gander on patrol met me at the bottom of my outdoor stairs. His wings stretched outward to warn me not to come any closer to his lady or the three goslings who pecked on grass behind her as if nothing significant had transpired overnight. The doting mother looked exactly as she would in a storybook.
I've admired the sight and sound of geese in flight, a lofty presence evoked in Mary Oliver's poem, Wild Geese. The cultural status of geese, however, is higher than I realized. An International Goose Day celebrates Elizabeth I's "lucky" lunch menu on the day her fleet defeated the Spanish Armada. The goose has been considered lucky since that day.
Authors and illustrators build careers around Mother Goose stories and rhymes, and, in Pennsylvania, children save a day to dress up as their favorite Mother Goose characters. Now that I see what a stand-up gal she is, I understand why they love her.
As a writer, I'm no naturalist. For me, her ordeal had a crime or thriller flavor. It didn't inspire a cozy mystery, either, not after what I read about gosling-related murders on askanaturalist.com.
The moral? Don’t get too close, physically or emotionally, if you don’t wish to be rattled by the adventures of Mother Goose. Perhaps she took her mind off it all by thinking up new rhymes and stories. I wrote nothing but this post, which I deliver to you with great relief.
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