Goose

I saw a goose standing alone on a broad field of snow yesterday, while I was out on my afternoon walk. It was just hanging out, at the end of a long trail of gooseprints, staring straight ahead, not doing much. I stopped and watched it for a while. You don’t often see geese alone. They’re pack animals, I think. Or flock animals. Whatever.

I don’t like geese very much. No, that’s understating it. I despise them. I think they’re loathsome creatures, avian weeds, a terrible evolutionary error that someone needs to fix. I’m not sure why I feel this way — maybe it’s because they crap so copiously and with such little regard for the cleanliness of the soles of human pedestrians. Maybe it’s because they’re belligerant creatures who bully ducks aside whenever scraps of bread are flung their way. Maybe it’s because of all that unbearable honking.

But I didn’t feel that familiar wash of revulsion when I saw yesterday’s goose. It looked small and insignfinicant and almost invisible, standing in the middle of all that white: and, paradoxically, that made it seem almost noble, to me, and brave, and a little sad.

It was a melancholy and exhilirating sight, when it should have just been commonplace. I watched it for a while, standing in the street, feeling small and insignificant myself in the middle of all that black and tarmac. Then I went on my way.