oddballs

saturday 13 august 2011

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From 2002 until she died in 2008, this domestic grey goose in the photo lived wild in the Connecticut River here in turners trolls. She became a bit famous in these parts, but I never found that out until 2004, after having spent two years believing that the only human friends she had were me and a Russian man who used to visit her most days. But no, she had a good number of human fans, and I got to meet some of them. I heard stories about the various times her photo had been in the newspaper, which I don't read, so I never knew. I even heard a story in 2008 to the effect that she was across the water in the cove with her children -- she had had a family. The only geese available for her to mate with were the Canadian kind. Had this mating actually happened, or was it suburban myth. Don't know. In any case, I was very much in love with this goose, and very much in synch with her status as oddball: the only domestic animal among the wild ducks and geese and swans and cormorants. I'm an oddball myself, what with Asperger's and several other alienating issues. I know what it's like to be off-kilter in any group. And Goosie was always off-kilter there in the wild. Not exactly like the other geese, but enough like them that they in fact recognized her as goose-folk, but not really quite one of the clan.

One question that has never been answered: did she simply get tired of the life she had as a domestic animal on someone's farm, run away, and find herself a new life? Or did the humans who owned her get tired of her and dump her into the river? I suppose I'll never know that now.

Well, it's just about three years since Goosie's death, and here we go again. This year there are both a domestic white duck and a domestic white goose living here. I had my first sighting of the duck back in the spring; the goose I only discovered about a month ago. And yet again, my heart is deeply magnetized to these oddballs, these intrepid soldiers against conformity. I adore them, I envy them, I worry about them if I don't see them on any given wander-walk. They have achieved what I never could: they've found (or been forced into) a niche, and they're doing well there: making friends, eating well, flying free, retaining their essential selfhood. I root for them fanatically, their biggest cheerleader, their staunchest friend, and they know, of course, none of this.

If these birds decided to run away from home in search of greener pastures, then they have found them. They are adventurers, and rebels against the status quo. If they were forced into the river by human trolls who failed to keep their commitments to their animals, then they are victims of ugliness who have landed in a niche where they can turn their victimhood into freedom, happiness and family.

My envy smoulders inside me. They are odd and offbeat and happy. They landed in a place where they can make a good life out of their oddness. All this that I've never accomplished, and never will. No one holds them down or holds them back, now that they live wild. I will never, ever be able to live wild enough to prevent any human from ever holding me down or holding me back again. But in the case of two big geese and one big duck, I can fiercely envy and fiercely love at one and the same time. This is a feat I can't achieve with humans, because with humans, the moment the envy heats up, love becomes just about impossible.

I saw them only inches apart for the first time last night, this white duck and this white goose. They don't seem to be friends, since the duck swam off a few feet when the goose got so close. Maybe they're not friends, but they didn't fight. Just a yielding, a moving off to allow the goose passage. No war.

These oddies will go on living there among those who were born wild for a long time, it is my hope. And I will go on loving them, cheering them on, and envying them with a regret-fire that is as unquenchable as their delicious new freedom now is.
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