u s e y o u r h a n d s

I was talking with Wendy today about the goose nesting at her office. She mentioned that it hisses at passersby. And this tidbit, like Proust’s madelines, triggered a very special childhood memory full of feathers and lies.

Until I was 12, my family lived in this tiny hamlet in Central California. And because it was in the middle of fucking nowhere, we often had various animal interlopers use our place as a crash pad. One year, a Canada goose decided our pad was for her. She adopted our front yard as her own. My father named her Claudia.

Theirs was a strange affair. Claudia loved my father, but hated the rest of the family. She would chase us, hissing, snapping, and flapping, and turn her attention to our patriarch. And he loved it. Claudia let my father pick her up and stroke her feathers. In turn, she’d nuzzle his neck. This creepy bird-pornish situation made us kids uncomfortable, but it drove my mother crazy with jealousy.

And then Claudia disappeared.

My father missed his pet. My mother had always been vocal about her dislike for Claudia, so much so that my father accused her of killing the goose. “You just couldn’t stand it, could you?” he screamed at her. And I felt for him, but the rest of us were glad that biting shit-factory of a bird had beaten a trail for Splitsville.

But I think my brothers and I thought my dad was right. And although I will never ask her, I’m pretty sure she killed the bird or at least had her wacked. How much did it cost to wack the goose? Where did she hand off the money? Or did she do it herself, wringing Claudia’s neck with her bare hands?

And most importantly, where do goose killers go when they die?