The color of geese

The sky, the pond, the surrounding landscape, everything is the color of our geese this morning, white and grey. We woke encased in fog, a haze from the unseasonably - or seasonably from now on - warm weather, up to 60 tomorrow, and I could just make out their silhouettes up in their pen. I'm reading things into their behavior, watching the way they walk, stand, look at me, react to sounds, movement, as if they were all signs of shock, bereavement, post partem depression from 5 of their flock disappearing from their lives. And it's a ghosty day. Everything unfamiliar. I just spied them out the front window across the road, staring at the pond. Of course I was about to stick the word "forlornly" into that sentence right after "staring." But how do I know? Isn't the pond frozen over enough to give them pause? This grey white world melting a bit now from the 6 inches of Thanksgiving snow. Everything's off, so different. Where'd the green go? Or the moveable surface of the pond? The depth to dive in, the space for one's webbed feet to gain purchase and push you forward? Where did that world of water go? Go ask Persephone, headed south for the warm weather in Hades for the winter. She's no fool.

Post mortem on the processing.

Richard told me to expect to be haunted for a while. And I am. Up on a treacherously snowy driving day Wednesday. A quick chase and corner and cage of the first 4 and then 5 to be taken. An hour and a half drive north on slippery surfaces with their eyes looking up toward me reflected in the rear view mirror, as they kept cluck calming themselves. I turned classical music on low for them, cooed, thanked them, trying to calm them and in the process, centering myself.

The Processor's had had a busy morning, but there was no one there when I pulled up. Cynthia, tough and leathery with clear blue eyes and a kind smile, directed me around back. Snow covered the ground which I chose to see as a blessing, the white covering up what must have been pools of blood. I was grateful that their were signs of animal life around to balance out the surroundings, Muscovy ducks poking around near the barn, a blonde stallion pacing its stall, and 2 brown mares frolicing back and forth between pastured enclosures and rolling around in the snow, standing back up, and shaking it all off in a full body shiver. I'd never seen that before. From what I had imagined from Richard's story of his trip here last year, I had expected a larger building where the killing took place, but it was really an old double horse trailer decked out for its new purpose: 3 galvanized cones attached to one wall an open gap down its front side (beneath the cones was a pile of what looked like hard white straw or porcupine needles doused in blood - on closer inspection, turkey feathers); across from the cones was a combination sink/plucking/cutting area with big plastic buckets beneath; to the back of the trailer, a galvanized trash can atop a sturdy propane burner, a cauldron of hot water in which to douse the carcasses before plucking, and to its left, a wide-mouthed plucking machine, looking like a huge cotton candy maker. Just outside the trailer was another tub of cold water to place the finished birds. I lifted the hatchback door and saw that despite my efforts to protect the the floor, the geese had made quite a mess. No matter. I lifted the cage out and onto the snow and cleaned the mess. They were calm, the birds. Skittish when I pulled them from their cage, but I held them, thanking them one more time, and passed them off to Cynthia, now having donned a long, brown rubber apron and gloves. Phil, a jovial helper, was already in the back of the trailer and Ralph, looking like an old cowboy right out of Lonesome Dove, sauntered around the back of the trailer. I introduced myself and then told him we'd made the classic mistake of naming all our geese.

"Just rename them Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, etc," he said.

"Don't look now," Cynthia told me, the first 2 geese upside down in the cones, the knife in her hand. But I felt I owed them and I watched every step.

I'm still not right with it, the taking of their lives. I've spoken of this before. Richard was right, it stays with you. And there was kindness, thoughtfulness from Cynthia and Ralph. They were good people, proficient at their job. I remember when it got down to the last goose, one of the youngest, a gander. He had been the loudest squawker whenever we'd come home, whenever a stranger passed on the road, whenever it was time to eat. He'd relaxed in the cage, he was sitting down, Cynthia needed to use her "chicken hook" to tug him gently from the cage. I held him, loved him a bit, and passed him off to Cynthia. I heard her coo softly "You were a good goose" before taking his life. And still ... still ...

I drove home, lonely. No image of them in my rear view mirror. Knowing now they would be holiday gifts to dear friends, that the next day one would grace the table of our Thanksgiving hosts. The thought of that helped. I had to call Richard to talk myself down, ground myself, to reach out to someone who had had the same experience. I didn't want to berate myself with some form of "get over it! C'mon! Your cousins have killed and dressed game from time immemorial!" I then called my sister, leaving a message, remembering the time when she, a nurse in training years ago, had witnessed her first autopsy and had called me to share the experience. Life here and gone, no matter what size the creature, matters.

A lot of activity out our back window. The chickens are doing their little scratch and peck dance all over the hill, happy, it seems, to have a respite from the snow covered ground. Another group is up in the goose pen sprucing things up, snatching a little of the goose feed for themselves. A little tit for tat, the goose do the same thing to their food. Shmuel, Mary Ann, and Daphne (or is it Felicity?) are pretty vocal when I step out to check and see how they are. Not so much a belligerent cry from them as just "Yeah, we're here. We're right here. This is our territory, give us space and things will be just fine." And then a pure trumpety bray from Shmuel for no purpose at all other then to say "I'm alive!" A fine sound. And it stays clear and clear in the grey, white air.