Stephen and I love the city, but the noise makes me crazy, so buying our house in the country had much to do with this idea of tranquility in nature. On our first spring weekend, we wake up to a cacophony. I mean loud honking! We throw off the covers, run outside, and behold! A couple of geese flying overhead come swooshing down to land splash! in the middle of our pond. This is how we imagined country life. It’s very picturesque. And they stay. They build a nest, which is so perfectly like a storybook. And we’re the “Gentle Folk in the Cottage”.
Then, on Passover, Stephen’s Uncle Dan makes it sound more like an Alfred Hitchcock movie. “Geese multiply like Catholics. Those birds will ruin your property. “Geese took over his golf course. So I call the EPA, and the guy on the phone confirms our property sounds like the kind of environment Geese appreciate. “Oh no!” I probably sounded like I was about to cry, so he said, “Listen. Off the record. If you break their eggs, they’ll lay more, but if you shake their eggs, they’ll go away. We need to be prepared to move fast the second we see them away from the nest.
Sure enough, one Sunday morning, they’re not around!—probably off having Sunday brunch on somebody else’s pond with other geese couples. Suddenly, Stephen’s standing before me wearing the camouflage pants he wore in Vietnam. Holding a ridiculously huge Black Umbrella “To use as a shield,” he tells me and hands me the kitchen broom, which I’m supposed to use to “run interference.” “What the f—?”— “Janie, nothing’s gonna happen. It is just a precaution.” Fine.
So we set out on our mission. We sneak around the peninsula to the nest. A goose nest is a depression in the ground lined with feathers, leaves, and down like a comforter. Stephen stands over the nest. Opens out his big black umbrella and holds it over his head against this postcard-blue sky. He kneels on one knee. Carefully picks up the first egg and holds it to his ear. It’s like we’re in a surrealist painting. All that’s missing is a melting clock and his bowler hat. Goose eggs are big. Really big. Three times the size of a chicken egg. And there’s five of them. So he holds the first one to his ear and listens before he shakes it. I’m getting a rapid heartbeat. What if goslings still hatch, and they’re deformed? Flapping webbed feet where the tail belongs? Beaks for wings! “Maybe we should shake them twice,” I say when suddenly the geese shoot out from around the reeds like enraged deities! Geese are big birds. I never realized just how big, until they were about to kill me! These giant pterodactyls honing into peck out my eyeballs like Suzanne Pleshette in The Birds. So I raise my broom and start swinging it around my head in circles—while jogging around Stephen who keeps shaking the eggs! The gander whacks into his umbrella! Breaks a spoke!
The goose attacks my broom. I drop it. “Stop! I surrender! Don’t eat me!” She flicks out her lizard tongue. Hissing. Like Satan in my face. Hiss! Hiss! Hissssss!” I scream “Stephen, run!”, but he keeps shaking the eggs! Forget “running interference” I run for my life! You know how when you’re running so fast, your heart’s in your throat, your legs are burning, your eyebrows melting, but you keep going? A blood-pumping ocean pounding your eardrums! We return to the house on the brink of collapse, dare to look behind us, and see—the goose settled back on her nest. Like nothing happened. The gander swimming back and forth in front of her like a sentinel, guarding their would-be, rather never-will-be-thanks-to-us goslings, now nothing but egg drop soup. This incubation ritual goes on for weeks. Day after day.
One morning, the gander tosses his head and honks. The goose throws her head back and honks. They spread their wings and fly up into the sky, away from the two humans who destroyed their progeny. I run to the nest. Ironically, the eggs have been broken into overnight. Cracked open and eaten by a raccoon or coyote. I gather the shells and paste them on a paint brochure under the words “Eggshell Finish.” I stick on a couple of Band-Aids, draw a nun, float the works on cheesecloth, and stretch it over a wooden frame. I call it “Penance”.
