A Lost Soul

The "expanded hunting season" on Canada geese has already begun and across our lands and over the coming weeks, hundreds of thousands of both, residential and migratory geese will continue to be shot out of the skies on a daily basis.

I sometimes wonder if hunters ever consider that when they "fall" a goose, they are taking out someone's mother, mate, sibling or offspring?

Since the return of the Canada geese back to Harlem Meer a couple of weeks ago, I have noted one particular lone goose who is separate and apart from the others.

Day after day, s/he swims on the lake forlornly, back and forth from one end to the other seemingly in frantic search for what is presumed, a missing mate.

While swimming, the goose repeatedly calls out, a lingering, lost and haunting "honk" so reminiscent of the eerie cries I heard from Binky, the first night his family left Turtle Pond and the flightless, "Angel Wing" gosling was deserted and left alone.

It is apparently a call for the lost.

I feel a sense of pain for this particular mateless goose. S/he may appear to the casual observer like any other goose at the meer, but s/he is not. S/he is apparently without family, group or mate. And that is in reality, a sad situation for a Canada goose.

Thus, the constant searches and calling out. A calling out for something that cannot return to her/him ever again.

But, it is not a matter of the goose requiring rescue.

S/he has no obvious physical illness or injury.

The goose's injury is of another kind. -- Injury to the soul.

And there is no remedy or "rescue" for that.

Hopefully, as with most humans, time itself will eventually heal the wound and sense of loss to this perplexed and distraught soul. Perhaps the goose will ultimately find another mate.

But, to be truthful, I don't actually know that much about Canada geese and how quickly they "heal" and rebound from loss of a mate.

Almost all that is out there in terms of information on these animals has been written by those who pursue, lure, decoy and shoot them.

But, why should we believe anything they say, if the hunters never bother to think about or care what mate or family member they are taking out when shooting at other species?

One has to figure if they actually thought about these questions, they wouldn't be able to kill these devoted, proud and magnificent animals in the first place. -- PCA

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