Wigwam Jones

Makes me kinda mad.

I'm not a fan of geese. Big annoying crap-monsters, not afraid of people, some of them seem to like standing in parking lots and challenging cars to run them over. My dislike of geese is not entirely their fault, there was an issue of my intentional disturbance of the tranquility of the geese that lived on a farm belonging to a friend of my dad's. I liked to chase them around and hiss at them like they hissed at me. Unfortunately for me, a big gander did me an insult with his beak, snicker-snack, and I became somewhat gun-shy around the messy things, not to mention hating them quite a bit more.

Picture seven-year-old me, (I had hair then) running and slipping in goose poop while a big mean old gander chased me and bit me over and over again on the butt. Yeah, it was a party. I got what I had coming to me and then some.

And we've got a bunch of 'em up here in Detroit. Canadian geese, they love it here. They land on the grassy runways surrounding the compound where I work and honk and crap and then they crap some more. Most irritating.

Well, I've been watching the geese in the parking lot of the build where I work for some time now, and trying to step lively to avoid the goose poop all over the sidewalks, and there was even one nasty old gander who may have heard about my run-in with one of his ancestors about 40 years ago, because he'd face me down on the sidewalk while I was on my way into or out of work, and he'd lower his head and hiss at me. I told him I'd kick his guts up and out of his beak if he kept it up, but he never busted a move on me, so I didn't lay a feather on him. We just didn't like each other.

Then I figured out the reason he had been blocking the sidewalk and hissing at people. He had a mate, and she had decided to build a nest at the base of a pine tree about five feet from the sidewalk, directly in front of the building where I work. He was apparently attempting to 'defend the nest'. which confirmed my belief that geese are unutterably stupid as well as annoying. They remind me of poll-takers in shopping malls, is what.

For the past three weeks or so, I've been walking past that nest every day, and that goose would keep a very close eye on me as I walked past. The gander was nowhere to be seen, probably out scrounging the local Italian restaurant's trash cans for left-over piccalilli.

I made it a habit to make eye contact with that goose, and she stared and me and I stared back, and to break the ice, I said "Hello, duck." I did this on purpose, because first, I think confusing geese is a good thing, and second, it made the people around me say "That's not a duck, it's a goose." At which point, I would reply "Shows what you know," and keep stepping. Because confusing people is good, too.

So every day it was the same thing - I'd go to work, "Hello, duck," and I'd go back to my hootch from work, "Goodbye, duck," and it was loads of fun. Well, if you're me, that is.

This morning, I got to work and the first thing I noticed, from quite some distance away, was that the goose was not on her nest. As I got closer, I could see the downy feathers that she had built her nest with were scattered over a wide area of the lawn. The freshly-mowed lawn. As I got right up to the nest, I saw the remains of the eggshells that had contained her ducklings, er, gooselings.

I saw the goose and gander huddled up against the side of the building. They were just kind of wandering around aimlessly. I didn't know what to do, so I went inside and went to work. When I came out at lunch, they were gone. When I left work tonight, they were still gone. I guess they won't be back, nothing to come back to.

I don't like geese. It was stupid for the geese to build a nest right up next to a sidewalk in front of a busy office building.

But it is springtime, and it has been getting warmer out, and somehow, the thought of new life - even geese - made me happy. I was looking forward to seeing the eggs hatch and some fuzzy little soon-to-be-nasty goslings following around their parents, even if it meant more goose poop on the damned sidewalk. Seeing those feathers spread all over the lawn and the broken eggshells made me sad and angry. You can see the lines in the lawn from the wheels of the lawn mower, it swerved to run over the damned nest.

Bastiches. Rotten, son-of-a-beeching bastiches. Somebody ought to run them over with a freaking lawn mower, is what.

It's still springtime, but a little less sunny out. Know what I mean?

Yours in Angrytude,

Wiggy