The Ancient and Esteemed School of Goose Mind.

(DRAFT ONLY  If you came here by accident please return in a week when a real launch will occur.)

I have been watching geese once and a while for the last three years, and they have given me a solution to one of the biggest philosophical questions of our generation: do people think?  And if they do, why are we so damned thoughtless?

Goose watching is fun.  Do it with or without a camera.  Spend some time.  Find a good spot, where the gaggles doze, preen, interact at regular times of the day.  

One becomes two.

My education started during a migration snafu when the weather stayed too cold too long, and successive waves of migrations up the Mississippi flyway got into a traffic jam in Minneapolis. Our local lake became a festive mass of species, making the most of the open water, waiting for the lakes further north to open to their breeding needs.

When I finally had taken all the standard goose shots, I left the camera in the wayback and just watched the Geese.  Some things I noticed:

In the morning, around 50 geese were sleeping in the boatlaunch.  About half were on the concrete apron, the rest on the grass.  A passing dog on a leash was sensed at a distance, and the entire gaggle would rise instantaneously, then head for the water at various speeds.  When the leashed pet passed without challenge, the gaggle would settle down in place without ado.

Any goose seemed free to do anything it wanted at anytime, but there was a very small vocabulary of gestures and actions the geese took when gathered at the overnight site.I know that animal ethologists catalog these things.  I was interested in visual patterns, not systems or labels.  This blog makes an effort to unspool gestalt reactions into narratives, and I don't expect it to be too successful.  But if I can capture a bit of the freshness of the experience and pass it along, it will be worth the trouble.