Picture it. Princeton, 1976. I was 21, newly arrived on the east coast, just married. Not at all worldly. So young. So easily surprised by new experiences. So easily surprised by…a goose.
Growing up in Southern California, my daily life was fairly tame suburban living, school, homework, after school, hanging out with friends, playing music sometimes, doing my day job at a little bookstore, learning slowly how to look more like an adult. A big outing in the mid 70s consisted of driving through In-n-Out Burger, eating the fries, feeding the ducks at the park pond and dropping fragments of burger buns for the parking lot crows. There were no picture perfect, gum snapping, roller skating waitresses at In-n-Out Burger. That was so 1950s. Nope, it was the 70s, man, and we all ate food that couldn’t possibly been good for those birds. It wasnt even good for us! But it filled our bellies, human and avian, alike.
I recall two experiences with birds in Southern California. One was feeding pigeons at the mission San Juan Capistrano. My dad handed us little manila packets of bird seed from the gift shop that we carefully metered out to the cooing pigeons as we lured them close enough to get a good look at their iridescent neck feathers. One pidgeon thought my red head made a great perch and landed on my head. Unsure if I should laugh or panic, I was comforted by my dad’s calm words, “Now hold still honey, I want to snap a photo.” I liked their coo sound and figured out how to imitate them with a cooing sound at the back of my throat.
I also remember the sound of crow calls in the quiet of the morning. Not melodic like songbirds in other places I’ve lived, just a terribly familiar caw call. When I hear it I feel that Southern California feeling. Caws echoed off the cinder block fences that marked the boundaries of our close-packed ranch style houses. Warm dry air and the smell of our dusty green-gray olive tree in the backyard came through my bedroom window, open slightly. One branch bent slightly to accommodate that fat black crow. Caw caw. It’s not hard to talk crow. Though now I wonder if it’s such a good idea to talk crow to a crow. Who knows what one might actually be saying.
Cut back to autumn in small town Princeton along the banks of a narrow curving stream whose name I’ve long forgotten. There I encountered a gathering of geese, a gaggle. 21 year old me thought it would be clever to imitate them. Honking, flapping, sticking out my neck, I figured the geese might be amused. But no, geese don’t have a sense of humor. And they certainly don’t tolerate poor amateur goose impressions by a 21 year old redhead.
An impressive gander goose decided he’d had enough. First he extended his neck, then started to hiss in a terrifying, totally absolutely prehistoric manner and ran at me, wings flapping, running faster than I ever imagined a goose could run. But did I freeze? Did I quietly watch how magnificent an animal this goose could be as he turned from placid grazing along the shore to potential gunning for my weak spot? Oh no. Naive no more, I knew enough to run and he chased me away from the waters edge. I didn’t want to be near the water anyhow…
I feel closer to the crows where I live now in North Seattle than the California corvids. In the spring the fledglings fly from the nest and parents protect them. They caw at me. I try to be respectful, even kind, but I don’t try to speak Crow. I take my walk each morning and say, “Hello crow” in English to the inevitable bird on a wire nearby. I think it’s working. Not one crow attack yet.