Birds of a Feather ... Float through Life Together

Taxes.... Does that adequately explain my writing silence for the past 10 days?

Yesterday I guided Ander and Lucy to the pond gathering liquid on the south side of our house. A backhoe scooped fresh earth and buried rock out of this ravine last fall. We hoped that spring thaw would create a natural pool cum swimming hole for our goldfish and geese. Perhaps someday a geothermal heat source could be harvested from these humble beginnings.

During the six years that we’ve lived here, our geese—water birds that they are—have survived in the woods with a small rubber bucket that holds two, maybe three gallons of water from which they drink and bathe themselves. In the hottest, most desperate days of summer Frances fills a small children’s swimming pool with water and one goose at a time floats serenely in its coolness.

But yesterday Lucy, then Ander, walked down the slight snow covered mud bank and glided into this small natural pool. Immediately the two began their water dance: dive, surface, turn, flap, and float. In the 14 years I’ve known these blue-eyed birds I have never seen them so intent on submerging their entire beings in watery wetness: unabashed splashing; long, silent dives beneath the water’s surface; then placid floating.

After I re-entered the house I peeked out to observe their lively bathing. In time Lucy hauled herself out of the water and onto the snowy edge where she spread her wings and groomed her back with fresh-washed beak. Soon Ander joined her. He, too, began to groom, wings rising up and down, beak traveling along feathers that carried a winter’s worth of accumulated grime. In short order both geese were back in the pond, floating and basking in chill spring waters.

When we lived in the Twin Cities, on several hot summer days Frances and I loaded Ander and Lucy into the cab of our old red Dodge pickup. We drove to a small nearby lake where we unloaded geese and inflatable kayaks. Soon we formed an unlikely chain of water traffic: Frances in her inflatable boat, then Steph, followed closely by Ander, then Lucy.

We paddled into water lilies and stopped while the geese explored the water and weeds around us. Slowly the four of us paddled back to shore where we reloaded boats and geese for our return. In those days the geese seemed nervous about their truck ride and, suspicious of our destination, stayed within arms’ reach. Though they enjoyed their water outing they seemed relieved to return home to their swampy suburban wetland.

But yesterday was a special treat for us all. What a wonderful, wet, fleeting-flapping-floating celebration of life!