GOOSED!
As far as I can remember, I have only eaten goose one time in my life, and that must have been enough because I don't seem to have any hankering after a goose dinner today.
It happened a good many years ago when we lived over on School House Road.
Our two boys came into the house just moment after they had gone out to play on a cold Saturday morning. “Granddaddy here!” they shouted as they came came at the back door with him. “'N he's got a big bird with him! Sure enough he had a big bird -a gray goose of exceptional size. I recognized a semi-pet Canadian goose which had come to his farm several years, fed with the ducks , liked the corn an stayed around eating until he grew so fat he could not fly. He became a permanent resident.
.
“What happened to him?” I asked as we gathered around the limp, feathered corpse stretched out on the back porch table.
My father-in-law spoke softly which seemed right for the occasion and the boys listened intently.”Right after I finished milkin', I tossed a handful or two of shelled corn out on the bank there by the pond. Ole “Cannie”, here, helped the ducks clean it up right quick, as usual. Then, I don't know fer what reason he did it, but that goose ran down the barn bridge and took to the air. On a cold morning like this one, too!”
We all laughed gently because we, too, had seen the fat bird struggle into the air at times. He seemed to get an occasional urge to fly into the wilds. He flew most often in the Fall when the ducks migrated southward overhead, He gloried at their frequent visits to the pond, too.
“Did he fall down?” Andy Jr. asked “Is that what happened to him ? I' bet that's....”
Grand daddy blew his nose on a large handkerchief form his pocket, wiped his eyes a bit, too, and continued as he commented on how cold it was outside. It's freezin'!” ”No, he did not fall, Not that way, anyway. He got up in the air; made a wide run off to the south but, pretty' soon, I could see he was turning back just like he always does and he was headed for the little end of the pond He was comin' home. I was watching him come in. Well, sir, that goose came in across that pond 'n stuck those big feet of his down and splayed 'em out to brake his landing a bit - and that's what kilt him!”
Both boys: “Why, Granddaddy? Why would that hurt him?”
“Fact o' life,boys! You younguns', of course, don't know that birds like that can't tell froze-over water - ice – from regular summer-time water, so he hit that ice on those feet of his'n and slid, I swear he done forty feet or more in no time at all! Even then, he could have made it, but you know that old fence that used to stretch across the middle of the pound - that single old post stickin' up out there in the middle Well, sir! “Cannie”, here, slid on that ice,. outta control, and his wing...” He took the bird's wing in hand to show us; smoothed back the heavy, bloody feathers and thick down “his wing smashed right into that post! Oh, he was really movin', too! He slithered around toward the edge of the pond 'n just lay there, real still on the ice”.
Granddaddy and Dad went aside a talked about what he had found he needed to do, and we boys just stood there and looked at the bird. After a moment or two, we touched the broken wing which, we could see, had been ripped pretty much loose from his body He was brought to our house because we had an old “Warsh House” which was equipped with a giant iron cauldron - a witch's kettle - we called it, and that was about the only thing big enough to hold that bird. We fired it up and dipped that goose down in scalding hot water until we could pick feathers and such a mountain of them we had never seen! In olden days, Mom told us, they would have been dried out and saved for stuffing pillows, quilts and other soft things. Dad and Granddaddy butchered the big bird. Some of it went in the freezer and we ate goose for along time!
AW-RIGHT! I just knew there would be one smart-alec, know-it-all genius out there waiting to play the purist and remind me that a girl goose is a goose and a boy goose is a gander! Well, didn't I call him “he” all the way through this piece? Yes, I know where goslings come from, too.
A.L.M. October 22. 2002 [c824wds]
