The geese that inhabit Buckingham Pond in Albany are, to say the least, often supremely annoying. Though we might romanticize geese as gentle occupants of parks and ponds, they are in fact wild animals operating instinctively with little consideration for our sensibilities. If you innocently come too close to a goose’s babies, it will hiss malevolently at you and peck your legs hard, the fact of your lack of malice notwithstanding. And though they demand that we keep a respectful distance from their families, they are entirely uninterested in showing us any courtesy with the practice of good bathroom etiquette. They thoughtlessly leave their calling cards on the ground, with no thought for the shoes of hapless passersby. I am not fond of geese, to say the least.
Yet in the late Spring or early Summer, when their newborn goslings hatch, waddling tentatively around inside their wet, grey-yellow down, I become their unlikely devotee. Several times in the last few weeks, I have braked to a sudden, nervous stop on Berkshire Boulevard across from the pond as a gaggle of them plods along. The parents march with single-minded purpose across the street with an average of four or five goslings in tow. They at least seem blissfully ignorant about the powerful wheeled machines under our accelerator pedals that could obliterate them if we don’t notice them in time. Restraining any annoyance or impatience we might feel, my fellow drivers and I wait with a quiet reverence for the goose family procession to finish; I almost marvel at the quiet, straight-lined elegance and order of their journey from the pond to the tasty bugs and grass on the lawns of the adjacent Apartment buildings.
Not running over a gaggle of geese is a simple matter of human respect for life and other living things. But when I encounter them stepping out into society with their new children, I also find myself deeply drawn to them despite my usual antipathy. Seeing them so often crossing the street has me thinking a lot about Robert McCloskey’s illustrated classic, Make Way For Ducklings. Ducks, geese and swans are all distant cousins within the biological family known as Anatidae. The book’s gentle story magically personifies all of them through the adventures of the Mallard family. The Mallards fly and swim all over Boston in search of a comfortable, safe place to nest, hatch and raise their babies. They are befriended by a Boston police officer named Michael who kindly feeds them peanuts and ensures, together with his fellow officers, their safe passage across the city’s busiest thoroughfares. This image of law enforcement so kind that they would stop traffic for a family of ducks feels discordant. Yet that is why it works so well in McCloskey’s imaginary, magical world. Even the tough, nightstick wielding cops become suckers for these downy darlings who live at the mercy of society and its technologies. For the few moments that we are reading the book, the prophet Isaiah’s words come to life: the wolf lies down with the lamb - or at least the duck – and a preternatural peace descends upon the world.
Perhaps the same thing happens to me when I am in my car braking for goslings. For those few moments that I give them the right of way, my usual irritation with the geese gives way to a small but sublime feeling of solidarity across species. Though for them it is mostly instinctive, they are engaged in the deeply sacred act of caring for children and growing a family, something whose preciousness and challenges we understand all too well. They do this despite the obvious dangers of being overwhelmed by a world of predators, first among them, human beings. Watching the waddling gaggle go about its business, I think to myself, “Dan, between you and these birds, who is actually the greater annoyance to whom?”
Every Spring and Summer during hatching time, the geese in my neighborhood become exemplars of what I like to call valorous vulnerability. They lack the brute prowess of a slaughterer’s knife or a speeding car, so they are no match for our potential to destroy them. Yet the geese pay this no mind. They never cease to bring new life into the world, as their species has done for millions of years. Their truest power – their greatest valor – is their persistent impulse to survive, despite the low odds of survival of any individual bird. Whether in McCloskey’s book or on Berkshire Boulevard, the adults amble across our roads with their babies compliantly in tow, and the dizzying-fast world is brought to an abrupt and humbled stop. We marvel at their uncanny tenacity, and we sense the small but compelling moral claim they have upon us: we breathe the air they breathe, and, like them, we hover protectively over our young to keep them from harm. We share with them the miracle and vulnerability that are the legacies of everything that lives. People and geese are not interspecies sisters and brothers. But in the grandest sense, perhaps we are birds of a feather.
Dan Ornstein is the rabbi at Congregation Ohav Shalom in Albany, NY. He is the author of Cain v. Abel: A Jewish Courtroom Drama. (Jewish Publication Society, 2020)
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.