Not a Good Night for the Geese

A quick post from Staten Island, New York.  I wasn't sure how to begin this post, as I have a story about the drive, but it isn't a happy one, and the reason we are here actually is a happy one.  By now, around lunch time, Pete and I will be the proud parents of a bouncing baby college graduate!  With honors and everything!  Sending her out into the world, it's almost like birthing her all over again, except this time she has to start paying her own bills.  (Fingers crossed.  Toes, too.)  She has chosen to come home for a couple of weeks and then move back to NY to find a job and a place to live.  She has a place for the summer, so, you know, the fingers crossed thing again.  Pete keeps asking what we should get her for graduation.  WHAT!?  We PAID FOR  MOST OF IT! and will probably pay her RENT for the summer.  I think we have done more than enough, don't you?  More on this story to come, complete with a photo or two, I am hoping.

So.  We left home this afternoon (well, yesterday afternoon) around three, headed to Boston to pick Meg up on the way to New York.  We had to take Pete's big honkin' gas hog of a truck, because Gillian is moving the contents of her dorm room, wait, that makes it sound like there couldn't be very much to move, but really.  You would think we were moving the whole freaking dorm back, for all of the Rubbermaid containers and suitcases we will load into that truck.  It never ceases to amaze me, the amount of stuff that can be crammed into a hole in the wall dorm room.  Anyway, there we are, in the truck and as usual for travelling with me, we had plenty of bathroom breaks.  The only reason I mention it is because one of them was combined with a stop at a Panera in Connecticut, south of Hartford someplace.  Practically shaking with hunger I went in, used the facility (like that?  I could add detail if you want it), ordered our food to take out (we were in a hurry) and headed straight to the car.  I didn't look right or left, the need for protein was so great.  Pete hops in the truck and asks, "Did you see all of the knitters?"  WHAT!?  I missed the KNITTERS!!!!  What kind of a knitter does that make me?  The girls saw them, too!  A bunch of them, knitting out on a Thursday at a Panera and I missed the chance to look at them as I walked by.  Anybody out there reading that was at a Panera right off of 95 in CT last night?  I missed you!

We continue our journey, the light waning into that time just past dusk, when there is just the last little bit of light so that you can't really see anything, but it isn't pitch out yet.  In the center lane, surrounded by traffic, we are whipping right along when in the right lane I see a beautiful and potentially horrifying sight.  Two beautifully graceful geese are crossing the highway and I we get closer, going 75 mph, me with both palms to my temple screaming, "Don't hit them, Don't hit them!"  I see the babies.  Probably seven or eight goslings waddling into the highway to certain death.  We passed, the family had not made it to our lane yet, and I had a choice to make.  You see, my mind goes.  Usually to the worst possible scenario of any situation, it just goes, plays out the story in gory detail, and my mood goes with it.  But this time I decided to imagine the cars miraculously stopping and the new babies making it across the road (where, to be truthful, there was no place to go as this section of the highway is seperated by cement barriers, those birds were toast) and everyone living happily ever after.  Along I ride in my delusional state when several miles later a car passes us and pulls into our lane.  At first it took me a minute to register that there was something being dragged in the undercarriage of the car, but as the realization hit, and my delusions blew away like so many feathers, I had to hide my eyes in shock.  I didn't want to look, but couldn't help it for some reason, that beautiful thing being dragged in our headlights for miles.  I couldn't help but think that all of those hours spent sitting on the nest were for waste, the whole little group gone in an instant.

Then my mind went immediately to a childhood memory.  My mom was driving in highway traffic, and I have this feeling that it was from the airport.  Those were the days when families had only one car and when my dad travelled we would drop him off and pick him up from the airport in Baltimore or Washington D. C.  I'm in the back seat and we are driving, bumper to bumper, on a three or four lane highway, when a family of ducks begins to cross the highway.  People were looking and pointing, autos were slowing down, some were trying to stop, when, and this part is really blurry to me, the ducks walked in front of our car and my mom ran over some of them.  I remember being stunned, but conflicted.  You know how, when you are around seven or eight, that your mom is a super-hero?  That she is lovely and loving and does everything for you and she could never do anything wrong?  I thought that she could have stopped, we weren't going that fast.  Or were we?  She would have stopped if she could have, right?  There were people in other cars (it was a very warm day, windows were down) screaming at my mother.  I remember one man in particular, with long hair and a moustache, yelling at my mom for killing some of those birds.  I think I sided with the other people for a minute and asked my mom what she did?  Why did she run over them?  I don't remember her answer clearly, but something about the highway traffic and it would be dangerous to stop right there, so maybe we were going faster and my memory is in slow motion.  I have thought of that day over the years, but would never bring it up to my mom.  I wonder if she remembers it.  I'm afraid bringing it up might make her sad, so I never do.  That little conflicted girl still lives in me, wondering, was my mom right?  Were those people yelling at her right?  I clearly remember feeling really bad that that man yelled at my mom, with such vitrol it turned him road-rage ugly.  It is funny to me, that even today, with the added tool of adult reasoning, I still can't work it all out.

Here is one last final truth, another conundrum, and this might make you stop liking me for a minute or longer.  Here's the thing.  While I mourn that family of geese, as beautiful as they are, I also cannot get over that they are nasty dirty things that infest public areas and poop all over them, making them inhabitable for humans.  I, like my grandmother before me with her pigeons (she would knock their nests off her house), would fight a war to keep my yard clean.  Watch, I'll get home from New York and find a family has mistaken our pool for a pond and moved in.  It wouldn't be the first time.

Three hundred thirty to go.  I'm so glad I'm not that woman, getting home and finding a huge goose under my car.  I found a bat stuck to my windshield once, ewww.  That's enough.           

Comments

[Carole]

I understand your conflicting feelings. Squirrels are rodents but I still feel bad when I see them dead in the road. I hit one once and I felt terrible.
Congrats on the college graduate thing. And yes, you already gave her the best present ever. Two working parents who paid for her education!

[Marcia Cooke]

I'm not the least conflicted...we are not talking Canada Geese here, but the dreadful Russian Field Geese who are terrible and disgusting. There is a pond behind us and they produced dozens of goslings every year who all come over and poop in MY yard, and it isn't even my pond. Nuisance doesn't come close, but don't get me started on the 47 deer who march through my yard eating everything but the boxwood, or the #@*% woodchuck who eats all my vegetables! I think I like you more for the fact that your attitude is rational and not so sickly sentimental as some out there.

[Marcia Cooke]

Sorry....congrats on the graduate!

[Kathy]

Mazel tov to Gillian and to her proud parents!

[margene]

It happens around our place often as there are so many ponds, rivers and canals. Sometimes people stop but often you see the remains of people who didn't. It's so hard to stop at that rate of speed and a dead goose is better than crashing cars. They are such huge pests anyway. Well said.
Congrats to you and to Gillian. May she have the best summer ever!

[maryse]

oh my god. yesterday on my way to work on the mass pike i was driving in the right lane and i saw a whole family of geese right on the side of the road probably thinking about crossing and i came this close to calling the state police to come and move them. because i could just imagine the carnage and/or the potential for a serious accident. your poor mom. because i would have felt horrible if i had hit them. (i once felt really bad about driving down the mass pike with a lady bug on my windshield wiper. i guess that sounds crazy doesn't it.)

[claudia]

What a mental picture.

Congrats on pushing one out of the nest!

[Imelda / GreenishLady]

Oh... I once came upon a Mother Duck leading her ducklings across the road, but luckily, there was no traffic, and i was able to stop for them. I feel bad for your Mom, to not have been able to avoid that. I'm a goose fan, but then, I don't have to tolerate their poop anywhere - just admire them from afar!

Congratulations on the new graduate! My baby has hit the pause button on his formal education so I'm not sure if I'll ever get to see him graduate, or how long it will take!

[Norma]

Congratulations! And so sorry about the geese...and maybe even worse, the memory it dredged up.

[Sunflowerfairy]

Are you sure it was 95 and not 91 north? Was it in North Haven? There was a Wendy's, Friendly's, a Target and a whole strip mall?

The New Haven SnB meets Thurs. nights at Panera in North Haven. I was going to go, but decided to go grocery shopping instead. (I hate making those decisions-knitting, food...knitting, food. Knitting should always win.)

Congrats on the grad. :)

[Manise]

O.M.G. The mental picture and the anguish! An awful thing to witness in plural (childhood and now). I'd be beside myself. Reading about this has conjured up the summer we were driving from France back to Greece- we must have been in the Alps somewhere. Beautiful mountains, bright blue sky with a few puffy white clouds, sunshine and wildflowers nodding and swaying in a slight breeze. My father a slowish driver happened upon a friendly wagging dog that slowly approached the camper from a nearby field and walked directly into the path of the left front wheel to be killed. I remember screaming at him"Why didn't you just stop? Or honk? You killed it! I hate you!" My father proceeded to get out of the car and checked to see if it was dead and drove away. I remember looking out the back window watching this motionless large sheep dog lying the road- someone's pet, guard dog and sheep herder. I felt sickened. I'm sure he didn't mean to hit the dog, but he sure didn't appear to avoid it either. I never really forgave him for it. I was about 9 years old.

[Manise]

I forgot to say Congrats to Gillian and to you and Pete!

[Laurie]

Margene's hanging modifier cracks me up. But I'm a sicko, I guess.

I guess it's pretty normal to be conflicted. I HATE the damn rabbit that eats my garden, but when he hops across the road in front of me, I stop. I found the nest once, and the baby bunnies were SO cute, I left them. Wondered about my sanity, too.

Congrats on Gillian, and yes, to the proud mama and papa who can subtract one tuition bill and count on a woman well launched into the world.

[Kim]

Terry...you should SO be a writer! I completely felt your conflict in your words. What a sad thing to witness both now and then, even if they can be a public nuisance.

Congratulations Gillian!!! Congratulations to you and Pete for surviving those college years!

[Kendra]

Um, did you mean uninhabitable?

[sandy]

Ew. Terry, that was awful to see. Perhaps because they were babies themselves.
Congrats to your baby leaving the nest, fingers crossed! What a wonderful celebration in your family!
xoxooxoxoxoxo

[clairity123]

Ya know, you just really didn't need to blog about the carnage on the highway, you didn't need to go into the details of the poor hapless creature being dragged in front of you. I don't usually comment on someones blog but this just wasnt necessary.