May 23, 2020

Dear ECG Newsletter,

I thoroughly enjoyed Larry Lieberman’s clever and funny diatribe Foul/Fowl Play in your excellent May 22 edition.  I also sympathize with his exasperation about the Canada geese’s constant fouling of the grass and walkways outside our door.  I wish they were as ugly as rats so I could hate them more. But I must confess that I get some pleasure from seeing them on my walks along the river every day in this Covid-constrained season, along with the cormorants and soaring seagulls. And one Canada goose in particular engaged my attention.

My walks usually take me downstream on the sidewalk along the river until it reaches a corner near the Science Museum. There I take a left onto the walkway that dips under the bridge below Edwin Land Boulevard, and walk along the canal that leads to the fountain by the Mall -- then back along the other side canal, under the bridge again, to where the walkway ends at  the driveway up to the Museum.  In that canal, as the geese started pairing off in April, I noticed l a single goose. He or she (I can’t tell the difference) was there alone day after day. Sometimes she paddled out toward the river and went under the bridge, but she always turned around as she approached the open river.  

I got the sense that he or she –I will start saying “she” for brevity’s sake -- was faithfully waiting for her mate, and that the canal was their implicitly agreed-upon rendezvous area.  The faithful goose was there, alone, each day -- long after I started seeing other Canada geese on their nests with a mate nearby. As her wait continued, unrequited, I wanted to tell her,  “Sorry, dear, but something happened. He’s not going to show up.”  I believed she was trapped by blind instinct, unable to face facts and to move on … whatever moving on means in Canada gooseworld. 

One day in mid-May, as I emerged from under the bridge, I spotted her in the canal, as usual. But lo and behold, another Canada goose was floating beside her!  The next day, there they were again, together. And the next day and for days thereafter -- sometimes in the canal, sometimes sunbathing at its edge, sometimes pecking at (and presumably befouling) the grass near its edge. 

I haven’t seen them now for two days in a row. In principle, along with Larry Lieberman, I am not rooting for her to lay eggs and hatch more Canada goslings. But as a guy who chokes up at happy endings of Hollywood movies, I was elated that her faithful wait was rewarded. 

Bob Kagan