Goose Watching

The first time I called myself the crazy bird lady, it was meant to be a joke. “Yeah,” I told the cop in my small Pennsylvania town of a little over 4,000. “Call me the crazy bird lady.” But nobody actually wants to be crazy, and certainly no woman over 40 wants to be a lady. Bird ladies are covered in dust, torn winter layers, and pigeons. They’re alone, having totally given themselves over to another world—some combination of age, ugliness, and the avian, not necessarily in that order. And that wasn’t me, not yet.

Still, I had been standing on the side of the road, wearing a long, ripped sweater, holding a net, trying to save a very sick goose. The officer furrowed his brow and glanced over at the goose neither of us knew what to do with. “All right. Nice to meet you, Crazy Bird Lady,” he said. And I could tell it wasn’t as ironic for him as I’d intended it.

~

I haven’t always liked birds. But my mother regularly sat at windows and pointed them out by name—black-capped chickadee, tufted titmouse, house finch (not to be confused with a purple finch), junco. She raised chickens and homing pigeons, rehabilitated hawks and owls, and always kept a parakeet in the house. Birds were, when I was a child, so ubiquitous that I guess I didn’t think to notice them.

I came to them later, long after my mother died, after I was no longer young, after I started following speed limits, after I had my babies, after I held a vintage camera in my hand and looked out into the backyard for something to capture. And there, on top of our little wooden fence was a cardinal. I gasped through the lens. A bird, like I’d never seen and had always seen, doing what birds do, hopping, bobbing its head, blinking and breathing. And though five minutes earlier, none of this was interesting to me, suddenly now it was.

After that, I was always looking for them, not wanting to miss a thing, head bent toward the sky, scanning branches and roof lines, peaking inside snags. A whole other world had opened up to me, even at the sewage treatment plant across from the elementary school, which was covered every December and January by hundreds of visiting snow geese, migrating from Greenland. It’s a near magical sight, the ground and sky bestrewn with them, a constant flux of whirling landings and take-offs, amidst a cacophonic chorus of trumpets. I’d often pull over, on my way to and from the school to drop off my daughter, just to stare in awe.

The treatment plant is surrounded by a barbed-wire fence, which the geese must understand, at least on some level, protects them from many predators. It doesn’t, however, protect them from the occasional prowling eagle, and, unfortunately, it doesn’t protect them from avian influenza. The goose I saw on the side of the road the day I became the crazy bird lady was laid on its side, appearing almost dead until I pulled over. Then it stood, ambled a few feet away, and pecked half-heartedly at the ground. I was no expert, but I worried this might be bird flu.

I’d taken a course on wildlife first-aid by then and understood, if vaguely, the dangers of H5N1. What scared me most, then, was the danger it posed to my pet birds if I took it home with me inadvertently. That meant I couldn’t transport the goose to a wildlife rehab. I’d have to call for help. But unfortunately, only certain wildlife facilities transport and only a few work with waterfowl, primarily because of the risk of avian flu. So after standing there in my pajamas, my knee-length old blue-and-white knit sweater, calling every rehab number I knew, I finally called the Game Commission, which I hoped would transport the goose to a rehabber if it had any chance of survival.

“It could take us a couple hours to get there, so try to get it in a box to secure it,” they told me.

“I’ll . . . try,” I said. But putting the goose in a box meant wrangling it, close proximity, and again, potential exposure to the virus. But motivated by the idea that the goose was in pain, I went in search of a box to the small-town grocery and then back home where I managed to secure one from a neighbor.

When I returned to the sewage-treatment facility with the box and a net (one I’d bought after unsuccessfully trying to rescue a mallard duck who’d been impaled by a fish hook), I stood there, begloved, impotently, wondering what to do next, and how to do it safely, keenly aware of the passing of time and how little there was left of it before I had to be at the college to teach my class. I still hadn’t even showered.

Then I had a thought. Maybe the police could help. Maybe that was my only option. Hell, firemen were known to get cats down from trees. I’d once found a coyote sick with mange, and a police officer had come to sit with it while waiting on the Game Commission. So I thought maybe, in a one-horse town like mine, the cops might have a few minutes to help get a goose into a box.

“No, ma’am,” said the woman who answered the phone at the police station. “We don’t really do that.”

“Oh, sure,” I said, deflated and embarrassed. “I understand.”

“Good luck to you though.”

“Thanks.” I hung up and stood, a would-be hero, staring as the sick goose pecked the ground, leaned to the left, swayed, pecked the ground, and swayed again. I felt it all the way through me—how sick and broken he was. And I knew that what had started off as an attempt to save a life had likely become a kind of vigil. Compassion is a mirror, and I had cast over this animal all my fears of my own mortality, of pain and dying alone. It was me who didn’t want to crumple on the side of the road, me who couldn’t fathom being left to wrestle with all my pain while the rest of the world went on their way. So I stayed, watching, my grip on the net, as if waiting for something to change—my own capacity to take him, to leave him.

Several minutes later, to my surprise, a large black police car pulled into the gravel driveway that led from the main road to the gate into the sewage treatment plant. The window slid down, and the officer inside smiled. “You the one trying to get a goose into a box?”

“Yes, sir,” I said nervously. Behind him was mounted an enormous rifle, which cast a noticeable glow of authority over him. I found myself wanting to meet with his approval.

He climbed out. I pointed toward the gate, where the goose had inelegantly waddled. “Well,” said the cop, “it might be better to just keep an eye on him until the Game Commission can get here. When’d they say they’d be here?” he asked.

“Couple hours maybe.”

“Yeah, all right,” he said, sighing. He lifted his chin toward the road, where a car was flying by, straight through the school zone, well above the 15-mile-per-hour speed limit. He threw up his arm and yelled “Hey,” but the car didn’t slow down. He rolled his eyes and set his focus back on the goose and then on me, as if noticing, for the first time, that I was a separate thing from the goose. I nodded, trying not to notice that he was a handsome man, about my age, in his forties, tall and broad, with a kind smile. For some reason, even if you’re married, when you are faced with a handsome man, you suddenly become aware of yourself in a stark way that you hadn’t been just moments earlier. As he rubbed his chin, I remembered all my imperfections—the bags under my eyes, the redness on my cheeks, the fine lines around my eyes, the wrinkle across my forehead. I remembered the loose skin under my chin, the flyaways on the top of my head, the holes in my pants, the matronliness of my damned sweater. God, why did I have to wear the sweater?

“If you need to do something, I’ll take a shift for ya,” he said, cocking his head and smiling.

I widened my eyes in surprise. Yes. There were things I needed to do. I had to get ready for work. I had to go to work. And yet I wouldn’t, a moment earlier, have allowed myself to go anywhere. Now, though, I wasn’t alone. And the gift of this washed over me in a way I had to hide for fear of alarming him. Still, I squeaked out, as I looked down at myself, “You’ll watch him for me?” Jesus, there was even a coffee stain on the sweater.

“I’ve got a little time.”

“Thank you,” I said. “So much.”

I went home, took the fastest shower I’d taken in a long time, covered the bags under my eyes with some makeup, discarded the sweater, and returned to the sewage treatment plant somewhat human. “Thank you,” I told him, again, when I found him talking to the goose, who had meandered back to the road, still pecking fruitlessly at the ground.

The officer nodded, waving at the cars and pointing at the goose as if to warn them he was there, likely to stumble into traffic at any moment. “Do you do this a lot?” he asked, positioning himself between the goose and traffic.

“You mean help animals?”

He nodded.

“Depends on what you consider a lot.”

“I saved a bird once,” he said, waving, with both arms, at another too-fast car. “My girlfriend and I have a little bit of land. I don’t know what kind of bird it was. We found it in our garden. It was a little thing. Hurt. Couldn’t fly. And I took it. I drove it. I got it help.”

“That was nice,” I said. He was letting me know he had a girlfriend, in case I intended to net him instead of the goose.

“I like animals too.”

I nodded. People often declare their love of animals to me almost defensively. It’s because I’m always trying to save them—squirrels, rabbits, woodchucks, birds, kittens, dogs, you name it. And that looks to others like maybe I presume to love animals more than the rest of the world. But that’s not it. For me, it’s a compulsion, sometimes a reckless one, that has, on more than one occasion, nearly ended with my being struck by a car or infected with rabies. No, it’s not that I love them more than others; it’s that I believe I have more in common with them than I do with most people. I have always felt small, awkward, unsure how to fit in, and vulnerable. Maybe we all do. Maybe that’s the great secret of being human—that none of us feel particularly good at it.

I wondered if he did. And, ridiculously, I wondered if his girlfriend did, if she felt small in the world. Or inexplicably alone, despite a world of people around her. I wondered what she looked like, if she had bags under her eyes, wrinkles in her forehead, loose skin under her chin.

Then, as if he could read my mind, he said she’d rescued a dog once, his girlfriend. It was a great big dog, and she was tiny. Like me. That’s how he said it, looking at me, my legs and abdomen, like I was the right kind of powerless, like I needed him in a way that made him better. “Tiny. Just like you.”

I looked away. He looked away. I sipped coffee out of my travel mug. He kicked the ground half-heartedly. Together we watched cars go by, ignoring limits, failing to even notice the big black SUV with the lights on top, and I wished I wasn’t glad to be tiny in his eyes, as if I had earned a good grade on a test. But then, I had spent a lifetime trying to meet with the world’s approval and confusing that with being beautiful.

When the Game Commission finally arrived, I asked the warden if he thought it was bird flu. He nodded and shrugged. A way of separating himself or me from too much truth.

“So he doesn’t have much of a chance?” I confirmed.

The warden shook his head. The police officer nodded, all the glow of authority gone from him. I sighed. This was long before the headlines about bird flu’s looming potential to become the next deadly pandemic, before watching geese fly through the sky felt like standing on the precipice of the world’s end and bidding it farewell.

“Well,” the officer said, as the Game warden scooped up the goose effortlessly with his net, “I guess that’s that.”

As the warden pulled away, with the goose in tow, we watched, neither of us saying anything for several seconds, both of us, I knew, feeling the weight of the loss.

“Well,” I said, shaking my keys and turning toward my car. “Thank you. I mean, for trying to help.”

“Oh, sure,” he said, heading back to the black SUV. “Guess I’ll see you for the next rescue then, right?” He turned back to smile.

And I felt so utterly grateful for such a promise that I could have hugged him. There had been so many lonely moments over the years, when I held an animal in their final moments, watched the light go from their eyes, or when I left them with the rehab, unsure if they would survive, had to get back in my car in the quiet aftermath of their tangled presence in my life, and drive the 45 minutes back home, trying to imagine who I might tell, who would understand the shaky grief and hope I felt. But next time, maybe I wouldn’t be alone. I imagined the two of us marching off together, nets in our hands, a team. We’d have t-shirts made. We’d make a Facebook page. The new and improved animal rescuers, now with sirens. Next time wouldn’t be so sad. Next time would be different.

~

Next time came several months later, after the snow geese had returned to Greenland. I was driving my daughter to school when I saw a Canada goose dragging its wing at almost the exact same place where I’d pulled over for the snow goose. So after I went through the drop-off line, I pulled over next to the goose to assess. Indeed, when the rest of the geese took off into the sky to avoid me, he was left to waddle across the road toward the ballfield and sewage treatment plant, where two black SUVs parked in the gravel parking lot, trying to intimidate drivers into following the 15-mile-per-hour school speed limit. I smiled, wondering if it was my goose cop. At a community parade earlier in the year, I had discovered, when he rode through town on a municipally authoritative float, that he was actually Chief of Police. I’d been tempted to wave at him during the parade, but I restrained myself. And even now, as I stood on the side of the road again, I didn’t wave, for fear it wasn’t him or that he wouldn’t remember me.

Besides, since the last goose, I’d upped my animal rescuing game. I now carried stacks of cardboard boxes in the back of my car along with elbow-length leather gloves, my faithful old net, towels, and bandages. At a fundraiser for the animal rehab, I’d met and befriended a young man named Tyler who had offered his help with waterfowl should I ever encounter another. “Waterfowl are complicated,” he said. “Just put my number in your phone and call. Next time you find one injured, I’ll come pick it up.”

Hell, short of heroic t-shirts, I had what I needed to take action. I pulled out my phone and dialed his number. It rang once before he answered. He was forty-five minutes away, but he was coming. “Just stay with him until I get there,” he said. “That way we won’t lose him.”

I sighed with relief as the call ended. I wasn’t alone. Others cared deeply for the tiny injured souls of the world. But as the cars passed by, on their way to wherever they were going, I looked at the time. I, too, had places to be. Work, in an hour. I couldn’t wait 45 minutes for the pick-up unless I wanted to leave my students hanging.

The goose honked, lifted one wing as it ran further from me, its other wing dragging. I had been the one to make the call for help. I couldn’t just leave.

Looking over at the two SUVs, I had a thought. They were parked next to each other, head to tail, so that their driver’s sides were next to each other. Clearly they were engaged in conversation as I jogged up, and the SUV closest to me rolled down its passenger window so that I could see the driver and into the other car, where the chief was looking directly at me. There I was, rocking my weight between my two feet, astutely aware of myself in my ripped leggings, my long blue and white knit sweater again, my glasses sliding down my nervously scrunched nose, and a loose stringy ponytail hanging down my back.

“Hey, Chief,” I said, holding up a shaky hand in a wave. “Do you remember me? Crazy Bird Lady?”

He nodded, tightening his lips. The second cop, younger, turned to the chief as if for an explanation. And the chief looked back with what I recognized as embarrassment.

There had been a time when I could ask almost any man for what I wanted and get it without much effort. I had spent my childhood in awkwardness, but something happened in my twenties, to my face, to my body, to the way I carried myself as a result, all of which gave me a strange power, like I could cast spells with my face. But just then, in that blue and white sweater, as the two men looked at me like a wilted pitiful thing, I felt powerless.

“There’s a goose,” I said, pointing awkwardly. “With a broken wing. Have you seen it?” They exchanged another look. “I called for someone to come pick him up. You know, to take it to the wildlife rehab. But, I . . . well, I’m supposed to wait, so that . . . well, so the guy who’s coming can find it when he gets here. It’s just that, I have to . . . go to work.” My voice started to trail off, and I hoped like hell that some kind of magic would make me disappear. But no such luck. “I was just wondering if maybe you’d mind watching the goose. I mean, not for long. The guy’ll be here in about 45 minutes. Just about 45 minutes. Just . . . so yeah.” I dropped my gaze to the ground, hearing my own ridiculousness. But then I remembered the broken goose, and tried one last time to lift my chin, pull back my shoulders, and be enough. “Will you help me?”

The other officer widened his eyes at me, as if trying to understand what I was, what kind of a woman would make such a request, as if I were, perhaps, pecking at the ground and trying to stand upright. The chief drew in a breath, sniffed, and cast a quick knowing glance at his colleague. “No, ma’am,” he said politely but unapologetically, shaking his head. Then, resolutely, he finished with, “We aren’t going to watch your goose.”

I backed up, smiling politely and shakily, my heart pounding. My goose. They weren’t going to watch my goose. They wanted nothing to do with my goose. My goose wasn’t much to look at anymore. My goose was old and sad. My goose was a has-been. “Oh, okay,” I said. “No problem. No problem. Thanks, um, anyway.”

The chief narrowed his eyes, empty of the compassion I had once seen in them. “It might look like we aren’t doing anything,” he started. “But—”

“No, it’s fine. I understand. Thank you,” I said, already moving away, wanting to stop him from saying any more, wanting to bury my head in my sweater. I told myself he had a good reason. Official police business, I thought, a crime maybe, something serious. Besides, this wasn’t about me. It was about a broken wing, a Canada goose, and the 45 minutes he needed from me.

The two officers didn’t leave that spot in the gravel parking lot, not when I drove over to the goose, now at the exact same spot where the snow goose had been picked up by the Game Commission. And as I leaned against the back of my Subaru and waited, I was alone with myself. No, ma’am. We aren’t going to watch your goose.

I looked at the clock on my phone and felt the pull of my own responsibilities. Sometimes there just isn’t time or energy. I pushed an unwelcome tear or two off my nose and thumbed out a text to my neighbor and friend, Susan, who had watched my birds on several occasions. “Need help with an injured goose. Can you wait at the sewage treatment plant for a half hour?” I shook my head. It sounded ridiculous. Who asked for such favors?

Yet she didn’t even hesitate. “Be right there,” she said, as if there was no question, as if she’d been waiting for just such a request. She arrived within minutes, nodded as I pointed out the injured bird, and smiled reassuringly. I left her there, the two black SUVs still in the gravel parking lot in the distance, and took off for a shower, to peel off the knee-length sweater and ripped leggings, even the glasses, trying to save something about myself.

They never got that goose. While I was driving to work, Susan and Tyler tried in earnest. But it surprised them with its speed and determination. Tyler called to explain this to me. Eventually, a man pulled over and told them the goose had been injured for a long time and seemed to be adjusting to flightlessness pretty well. He’d been watching. “We left it there,” Tyler said. “Besides, if I took him in, he’d likely be euthanized, so it’s better for him to be where he is, with the flock.”

Despite his broken wing, the goose hadn’t needed saving. The rest of the geese would take off into the sky time after time, while he stayed grounded, on foot, evading crazy bird ladies and other predators by running, sleeping inside the barbed-wire fence, adapting. Life would go on, past broken wings and knee-length sweaters, past school speed limits and black SUVs, past the phase of life in which you can enlist handsome police officers to watch your goose.

That’s what it does—life. It goes on past avian flu, past elections, and the price of eggs, past the piles of dead geese being bulldozed around the country as I type this. Past all that cannot be saved, all that stands on the edges, urging us to slow down, to pull over, look closer.

It’s not beautiful here, near the sewage treatment plant, and maybe I’m not either anymore. Maybe pulling over for the broken isn’t about beauty or heroism. Maybe it’s about what’s left of our capacity to see all we have taken for granted before it’s gone, to remind ourselves of all the beauty that has been, even if it’s on its way out, even if there may not be a next time. Maybe it’s about loving every last drop of beauty even as it fades, even when it cannot be saved.

Though I’ve let go of the blue and white sweater, I’ve kept the cardboard boxes, gloves, and the net in my trunk. Just in case there is a next time—something beautiful and broken I might hold, save, love a little, or stand vigil for. If you slow down, you might see me there, Crazy Bird Lady, watching the last tendrils of beauty drifting off into the sky in a whirling storm of white, every last breath of it, until it is gone.