There are fucking geese everywhere in Minnesota. I love the wildlife (such as it is), a reinforcement that the state's nickname is "The Land Of 10,000 Lakes." There aren't lakes but bodies ... well, pockets of water around the area. It's great for the quality of life.
It also attracts geese. What I've learned is that geese aren't copacetic with just staying by the water. They frequently walk to other places. I don't know where, whether it's home or another lake or something. But they travel. Sometimes across busy roads during rush hour.
Several times throughout my life I have seen a goose, and sometimes a trail of goose and their kids, walk across a street. I've stopped for one, maybe several, a couple times. I don't think I've ever seen cars in the middle of traffic just stop, even back up traffic, to let a line of goose and goslings cross. I have, however, seen a couple of geese, adult geese, lying dead on the pavement. I don't ever remember running over a goose. I think I've run over a squirrel that was dumb enough to dart across the road right in front of me. But I don't ever want to get into a situation where a goose or goose with children in tow come steps in front of me, and I am on a road and situation where I can't stop. I don't want to get into or cause an accident, yet knowing that I ran over one of God's creatures will kill me, even if I know I couldn't help it.
Last night, after work, with a few hours to kill before I had to go to a meeting that I didn't know was cancelled until I went to the restaurant where we usually meet, I decided to check how long it would take to go from the detoured way out of the test scoring site where I will be working all day next week to the main highway that will eventually take me to the test scoring site where I will start working part-time at nights next week. (Let's just say that I'll have about 90 minutes to go from place to place, and I'll need every one of those minutes.)
I was getting onto the on-ramp that led me to the highway that leads me to the main highway. Remember that this is the middle of afternoon rush; the car just ahead of me jerks over to the left side of the ramp, and if he's trying to avoid something. I don't have the greatest reaction time, so I just kept going straight while thinking, "What could he be avoiding?"
Then I look down, understandably risky during rush hour. I see something on the ground. Of course it's an animal, I thought. But as I got closer and starting to move past (and not over) it, I see that it's yellow, and moving. And then the image becomes clear: It's a little chickadee, not walking, not really moving, just writhing. I could be wrong, but it looks like it's looking up, therefore it has its back on the ground ... which means he probably is thrashing around in pain because it got run over. Of course, I could do nothing for him.
I also saw a goose, apparently its parent, on the side of the road, just watching. And this is where I start to anthropomorphize these two beings. I started to feel really bad for the goose, which I decided was a mother, and she's thinking, "NO!!!!!!!!! MY BABY!!!!!!!!!!! YOU BASTARDS KILLED MY BABY!!!!!!!!!!!" And then I thought, "No, they're not humans, they're geese." And then I thought that this goose was just watching its offspring's (possible) last seconds of life because she or he just couldn't watch, and after the motion stops and the life is taken out of him or her, she or he will just walk away, because it's a goose. It's how I sometimes think my parents will act if I ever die in front of them.
Oh, Mother's Day is Sunday???
No comments:
Post a Comment