Why Nat Hopes That Heaven (or Hell) Isn't Controlled By Geese

The geese of the Boston area probably don't like me very much. They're pretty slow birds, being so big, and so sometimes they have difficulty getting out of the way of crew boats. On several occasions I distinctly remember smacking a goose with my oar, though I don't believe any of the blows were fatal. So, I sort of believed that geese were rather annoyed at me for participating in a sport that inconvenienced them greatly and caused them bodily injury from time to time.

Then came yesterday.

While camping at Heron Lake, a man-made recreational park and reservoir in northern New Mexico, Almea and I went running with my goofy-looking dog, Griffy. The official park rules are to keep dogs on a leash at all times, but on runs we took him off the leash so he could dart about as he pleased -- we believed this made things more interesting to him. Yesterday morning, on one strech of shore, he spotted a flock of Canada geese. He ran after them, but they saw him from a good distance and had plenty of time to get away. They needed a lot of time because their general strategy was to glide down towards the water, which I guess they thought would get them away from land-borne predators but which wasn't as speedy as, say, flying away in the opposite direction from the predator. Well, once Griffy got to the spot where the geese were, they were all in the lake; but right around a bend there was another flock of geese chilling out on the shore, and this time Griffy was between them and the lake. They started flapping and gliding down to the water, and he just plucked one out of midair as Almea and I looked on helplessly (we were maybe 50 feet away at this point). The goose, which was well over half Griffy's size, immediately went limp as it hung from his jaws. We started calling to him but of course he didn't want us to take his prize away, so he didn't come. So, we did the next best thing: run away from him. And, I'm proud to say that his domesticated instincts forced him to drop the goose and run towards us. We don't know if he killed the bird; we didn't go back to check. But all I know is that those geese can't be too pleased about me introducing a foreign predator into their lives. Sorry, geese -- I'll keep him on a leash next time. And I'll pass on the pate de foie gras the next time I'm in France.