The Goose

I have been contemplating over which story that would be worthy to begin this journey. My mind takes me back to a simple time, where kids run barefoot in the streets and enjoy eating peaches out of the jars your mom or grandma bottled over the years. I remember eating a lot of bottled fruits and vegetables growing up, my favorite were always the carrots my mom would bottle with just a little brown sugar. I grew up with a large garden with an assortment of all kinds of goodies. It was always fun as a kid to go out to the garden and eat the vegetables right off the plants, or pick the pie cherries right off the tree.

Vegetables were not the only things we raised. Cows, rabbits, cats, pigs, dogs, and poultry. Oh the poultry. My mom used to incubate and hatch our own chickens. Not just chickens but turkeys, ducks, and geese. Now as a kid this process became very interesting to me. I even learned how to candle the eggs myself and used it in a science fair at Mountain View Elementary (Go Cougars!). One summer my mom wanted to try and hatch some geese eggs, and hey if you have ever seen a goose egg you know it has to be a neat experience. Well the time came for it to hatch and there he was, eager as ever to get that shell off of him. Out came Squeaker. The infamous goose. This goose ended up being a big part of my life as silly as that sounds.

Shortly after Squeaker was born we had a rooster follow along the same path, we named him Shadow. Shadow got his name because he was quickly bonded to the goose and the goose was bonded to, you guessed it, me. These birds followed me everywhere. I remember one day, walking out to the ditch that ran along the front of our house and started playing in the water. Yes, for those of you who didn’t grow up in Arimo, we played in the ditches as kids. Our swimming pools. Kind of. Well the goose jumped right in and started swimming behind me. I remember looking at the little chick that was standing on the bank of the ditch and wanting to jump in to follow like he always did but seemed hesitant. So as any little kid would do, I grabbed that chicken and dropped him right into that water. That was the day I found out that chickens don’t swim. A few gargles and bubbles later I found the chick in the murky water and pulled him out. He was fine, no harm done.

Throughout the summer the birds got a little bigger but still stayed cute. Well the goose did, the chick was now becoming a weird teenage looking chicken and you know how ugly teenage chickens are. Eventually he got mixed in with the rest of the chickens and lost his shadowing quality. The goose and I stayed close for a while, I remember feeding him spinach out of the garden and thinking it was so cool that he would eat out of my hand. Some of my friends remember the goose. One time I had my friend Shelley spend the night. She brought her really cool Little Mermaid sleeping bag over and we slept in my parent’s camp trailer. Squeaker slept with us as well. When we woke up in the morning the goose had pooped all over Shelley’s favorite sleeping bag and still to this day reminds me of it.

Things change over the years even with poultry. You may have been asking yourself why was this the story I chose to begin with. Well I had some insight while thinking about this particular part of my life. I’ll get to that part in a minute because I wanted to tell you what happened to these birds over the years. You may not like me for telling this part or maybe you will not even think twice, but like I said I learned a lesson from all of it. Remember I mentioned earlier about Shadow getting mixed up with the other chickens after a while? He became like every other rooster in the coupe and he got eaten eventually. As for Squeaker, I remember him slowly forgetting who I was. I was less frequent in going to see him and after a while he started hissing and treating me as if I were a threat to him. He had forgotten me completely after a while. Squeaker ended up dying alone in the chicken pen a couple of years ago. My parents had given up the chickens when I was in high school, so he ended up living the last few years of his life in solitude. The goose story has always been a fun story to tell, usually I would leave off the end part but I thought it was necessary for the written version.

Squeaker and I’s relationship may seem a little odd, but I picked up on a couple of things pretty easily from my friendship with the goose. One of the points I wanted to share was that if you wait too long to rekindle the relationships you’ve let linger or have carelessly dismissed, you begin to lose something. You begin to forget who those people you used to love are. They may remind you of the times you’ve spent with each other, but you can easily become the stranger you never thought you would be. Another point to all the madness of this story and the stories to come is to reach out to those people who have helped me become who I am and say to them I still remember.