Of us and "others"

You'll have to forgive me. This is neither finished nor polished. This last few months I really haven't had the luxury of time to write, as I've been busy relocating my business, catching up on clients and, well, learning about another species. Anyway, I jotted down a few things the other day...

In this culture, we have a problem with cowardly racism, laziness and greed. And there’s an unfortunate sense of dominion that somehow got implanted a long time ago - dominion over other creatures deemed lesser, dominion over “other” humans deemed lesser. There is apparently a sense that if someone or something seems inconvenient then it should be removed away, or removed by killing if deemed necessary by someone who decides such things.

Weeds, insects, rodents, indigenous peoples and so on. It doesn’t even seem to matter to the perpetrators of poisoning or displacing the unwelcome visitors that they poison their own wells make their own homes toxic, grow crops with insecticide built in (carcinogenic to humans in food) destroy our only life support system we call earth. Leaving an impossible equation for their - our - grandchildren. “They” are us. There is no other. Search your self, seek out all the ways you are lazy, take advantage of situations that make things easier in order to indulge a complacent and self entitled laziness. We call it “convenience,” “fast food,” “conventional and factory farming,” “the help,” “out of sight, out of mind.”

I had the unexpected good fortune to raise a wild goose this spring and summer. No idea that raising a goose would be so much like raising a baby all the way to adolescence in a very short period time. Albeit one who produces more poop per pound than any human baby.

When I was young our family had a cabin on a lake, and I remember when the Canada geese arrived and decided it was a nice enough place in the world to stay and call home. My dad hated those geese because they pooped all over the dock. I reckon he didn’t realize that a bucket of water would so easily have removed the partially digested grasses. I can still hear my mother in the upstairs window barking like a little yippie dog to run them off. She really put a lot of gusto into that. No harm, no fowl.

At some point, I learned that a wild goose might require some kind of permit, and I began researching. Everywhere I looked to find out about how to have a permit to care for this creature, all I could find were permits for killing them. It seems people don’t like goose poop. And although these birds are protected federally, it seems that one can simply say they are a nuisance because of their (quite benign) feces, comprised of grass that easily melts away with water or rain. It is also said that they cause depredation of crops. And so permits are issued for culling these birds in fairly large numbers for four months out of the year, which happen to be during the breeding season, when many adult birds molt and so are also not flying. So, while I may be breaking the law caring for this wild animal that was orphaned when it fell out of the nest and drifted down a river, it would be easier for me to get a permit to kill “it” than to raise him.

But not being much of a rule breaker, and not knowing how to proceed with this unexpected endeavor, I recently delivered this goose to a licensed rescue and rehabilitation facility in a bordering state. Believe me, this was not going to be an easy thing no matter what. When he was physically assaulted and manhandled by the person receiving him, it was off to a bad start. Then he was placed in a small pen in a very hot place full with other birds - injured ducks, orphaned geese, a couple of peacocks, all on a dirt floor with no grass, no room to roam, no water to get into. The nearest small pen just 15 feet away held a pacing wolf, no doubt dreaming of a duck dinner.

Now surely these folks care about critters and are putting a lot of time and money and efforts into helping them. And yet this man treated this goose inappropriately, and the environment he was put into was actually not appropriate either.

I’m not an expert about anything. I watch the world around me, spending a fair amount of time in the woods, along the river. And during the last three months, raising this Goose, I’ve observed quite a lot during the countless hours of grazing, napping, preening and, yes, pooping. I had never heard the phrase “like poop through a goose” until recently, but I surely know what it means. In fact, I know a lot about goose poop now. I know about the dark and runny acrid morning poop (that I could smell from 30 feet away), and the watery poop with white film. I know about the grainy, tan poop from eating feed, and the quite beautiful pthalo blue-green poop from high quality weeds. And yes, I also know about the dark and runny poop that happens when there’s stress in the environment. Come to think of it, not so different from ours.

I know that the poop, so widely disliked by humans, if it’s coming from wild geese in their natural habitat, is mostly grass. That it is excellent fertilizer, and I hear it doesn’t need to be composted, because it does not burn when placed on a growing crop. I am guessing that this is because it has already fermented in the belly of the goose. I also imagine that crop depredation is not as common as implied.

Wild Canada geese do congregate in growing numbers, as their communities are comprised of extended family. And they do create quite a lot of noise at times. As long as I remember them being in the Southeast – seems like since the 80s – I have felt the general dislike of Canada geese in people. It is a nebulous thing, not grounded in any particular experience of them. I think maybe it’s even an unconscious response to a foreign population moving into a territory where it didn’t exist before, and this being a beautiful place in the world with a generally mild climate, they decided to stay. No different from many of us who have chosen this as our home. Why on earth would we want to go anywhere else? There is the most amazing and diverse natural beauty here, and a plethora of resource in the form of wild forests and clean, running waters, open spaces along a short chain of man-made lakes (made to create electricity for our convenience).

In other lands, the creatures make great garden helpers, pulling weeds with ultimate agility while effortlessly applying fertilizer. They take excellent care of their amazing and powerful bodies, preening an impressive collection of hundreds of feathers, using oil from a built-in gland to make them impervious to water, unzipping then zipping closed each and every feather until they are all perfectly in order, discarding worn feathers and debris as they go. Their feet are delicate, soft like fine Italian leather, and yet durable for navigating water and land, rock and soil, taking off and landing on a variety of terrains. We don’t consider (why would we?) the astounding proprioceptive abilities of birds, much less those who inhabit both water and air - and land, of course. Can you imagine flying 1500 miles in a day, or bodily reaching up to 9000 feet above the earth and being able to see where you are going from the air? Say nothing of navigating air and water currents in that body.

I scarcely think that we humans consider the tip of a proverbial iceberg about a group of people or creatures we have not lived among enough to intimately understand their habits and character. We don’t ask ourselves what is beautiful and miraculous about them - what truly unique and necessary gifts they bring into the world. We shun them and bar the doors to our comfortable worlds. If they seem useful, we find a way to capitalize on their skills, but without incorporating them into our community - we point to an area we wouldn’t choose to inhabit and say, “there, look, there is a place you can have for your people, all just for you. Isn’t that nice?” A reservation. An up and coming neighborhood. Probably across the tracks on the south side of town.