Ruling the Roost

There you have a five-year old little girl,playing happily outside her house when this big white bird probably as tall as she is rushes towards her flapping its huge wings and making a noise like a demented lorry horn. Worse,it actually lunges at her and bites (or technically pecks) her. Now take it from me,a bite or peck from a goose can be pretty painful whether youre five years old or 50. And domestic geese can be violent. Feed a gaggle in a park and theyll rush towards you like a lynch mob,honking,flailing their wings menacingly and demanding everything you have on you,including your cellphone and credit cards. I have myself been chased by one such inner-city gang of layabouts in the otherwise yogic precincts of the Buddha Jayanti Park in New Delhi and it is undignified and unedifying to say the least. A bunch of similar thugs was also let loose in the nefarious Khooni Khan Jheel in the capitals Northern Ridge as ornamental birds and so that the authorities could boast that the lake supported waterfowl. The geese terrorised the local population of waterhens and pond herons and drove them away and promptly tried to drown the other domestic ducks also in the pond. Their marital life too (as is of some ducks) is extremely violent with wife-beating,attempted drowning and worse being par for the course. Really,they are the pit-bulls of the domesticated avian world.

Now lets look at whats good for the goose. Here you have a bird,descended from the sacred geese of Juno,who warned the embattled Romans of the impending attack by the Gauls,by cackling a warning,being persecuted heartlessly by the police for doing its duty (pecking people). Worse,it was tied up outside the thana to a motorbike,which is as humiliating as you being chased by one in a public park. Fortunately,as it is unlikely that any of the cops in the thana would have heard of goose liver pate,they did not commence force-feeding the bird until it confessed and its liver was about to explode. And this is a bird,not only with a noble historic past,but with major Guinness Book achievements to its credit. Of course,domestic geese cant fly (which perhaps explains why theyre so frustrated),but their wild relatives bar-headed geese are known to fly over the Everest while on their marathon migratory flights. And when a squadron lands in ripening fields,they can clear the crop and the cultivators whole years toil overnight. Theyve made their name in both literature and cinema too: who can forget,Paul Gallicos iconic The Snow Goose,and that wonderful film,Fly Away Home,which incidentally also features a little girl and a gaggle of wild geese and is a true story. Thankfully (for geese),they are well-protected by politicians around the world,who try their best to personally appropriate the worlds population of geese that lay the golden eggs and give them sanctuary in the salubrious surroundings of Switzerland or the Cayman Islands or the Bahamas. How can such a bird be prosecuted and booked?

So what then can be the verdict in this vexing case? With the way things are,with everyones sentiments so hair-trigger and antsy,I think were going to be afraid to say boo to the goose.

*Ranjit Lal is an author,environmentalist and bird-watcher. In this new column,he will reflect on the eccentricities and absurdities of nature