The Love of a Winged One

Dr. Robert B. Pankey

rbpankey@txstate.edu

It was a cold and windy day in November when a friend from home, Roger, picked me up in front of the house and drove me out to the Crab Orchard refuge where we promptly went out to the goose pit to hun

t for the big Canadian Geese.  These geese are so spectacular.  They measure about four feet across and fly in a “V” pattern formation.  Roger asked me if I’d ever seen them fly in that formation and if I knew why one side of the “V” was usually longer than the other.  I guessed that it had something to do with wind draft or some other scientific explanation, and he replied, “You sure are ignorant. It’s because there are more geese on one side of the formation!”  Roger was just that way, always trying to make me feel that my being educated was somehow a shortcoming.

As we got into the goose pit, there was a tiny stove in the corner.  We lit it, but it didn’t seem to help much because that pit was as cold as ice.  A goose pit is a deep rectangular ditch, about five or six feet deep, covered with a half roof with branches and leaves to give the appearance of a brush pile.  Around the pit a hunter puts down goose decoys and shadows (goose like outlines cut from plywood), so it looks as if a bunch of geese are feeding around the brush pile.  Crab Orchard is a national refuge for geese, and every year thousands of them fly down from Canada to keep warm and feed during the winter months.  There is a lot of leftover corn and soy bean for them in the fields after the fall harvest.

That morning there was a lot of activity in the distant fields, so Roger and I stayed alert, made a few goose calls, and hoped for the chance to shoot a few greater Canadian geese as they flew by.  Roger was an expert at calling them in.  He would use a “hi-ball” to attract them into range, then use an occasional feeding “chuckle” to make the geese think there was plenty to eat.  When the geese cupped their wings and came forward to land, it was beautiful!  But that morning, the geese were skittish.  They just weren’t responding to our calls.  We talked and watched the sky, and Roger would tell me some good jokes and stories about past hunts.  Of course there were a lot of lies about the ones that got away.

About midmorning we decided that the day was a bust, and we thought it would be best to head back to town.  As we stood up in the blind, we could hardly straighten up because of the cold.  The heater was burning as hard as ever, but we hadn’t felt any heat from it.  When I looked out over the decoys  for the last time, I saw two big Canadians coming straight for us.  It was as if we were watching a couple of fighter planes bearing down on us at 12 o’clock high.  Roger gave them a feed call, and I stayed low while he watched them.  He whispered, “I’ll take the goose on the left, and you take the one on the right.”  So I waited what seemed to be an eternity.  Then he stopped calling.  I knew they were cupping their wings and coming forward to land.  Roger slowly grabbed his Remington shotgun, the one held together with tape, and I reached for my gun, that Browning automatic that had been with me since I was a kid and had seen so many good hunts with me.  He said “go” and we both raised up and pointed our guns forward and looked down our barrels.  There they were, the biggest birds I’ve ever seen.  Big black heads, huge muscular bodies enlarged from all that flying from boundary waters of Manitoba, Canada.  My heart was racing.  Roger shot first and dropped the one on the left.  The bird to the right flared off, and I just kept watching it down my barrel.  How great it looked!  Like something from an art gallery.  I couldn’t shoot.  The goose that Roger shot was on the ground, flapping its wings, but the one that I was supposed to shoot was now out of range.  I dropped the stock of my gun from my shoulder and gazed out to the front of the pit.  Roger was complaining to me asking why I didn’t shoot, but I had no answer.  It may have been the cold that froze my thinking, or it might have been that it just wasn’t my day to hunt, but all I knew was that I chose not to pull the trigger.

All of a sudden, the goose that was flying off turned toward the pit and was coming back.  I had heard

about this before: geese are the kind of birds that become monogamous when they mate.  In other words, they mate for life.  This sets them apart from many other forms of life, including humans.  This animal instinct that they share is a bonding that cannot be denied.  It’s just unimaginable to me how geese, with so little intellect, can be so faithful to their mates.  As the goose flew back into range, looking for its mate, Roger pulled at my jacket sleeve.  When he saw I wasn’t responding, he raised his gun over the front edge of the pit.  I looked over at him eyeing that bird down his gun, and without thinking, grabbed the barrel and slowly lowered it.  Roger looked at me, eyes wide, and I sat back down into my chair.  There was a long silence in the pit because Roger and I realized our minds were reacting in different ways.  One mind was acting instinctively on survival, the other on hunting and killing.  I knew Roger must have been disappointed in me, and we just sat there staring at the front wall of the pit.  He got up and went outside to retrieve his bird.  When he returned, he climbed back into the pit, sat down, and said “Pankey, that was a great hunt, and there will be other days.” 

At that moment, when I knew Roger understood my thoughts, my love for life became more clear than ever.  It’s so reassuring to know that at times when I’m flapping my wings and in a tailspin, there is someone out there who will come back around, be strong, and be there for me when I need them.  The fact that the goose that had just lost its mate cared so deeply for its mate that it risked its own life to search for its downed companion was reason enough for me to let it live.  If only more people in this life could be as deeply concerned for one another.

My wife has shown me this quality every day that we have been together, and I’m so proud to know that she has that kind of love within her.  There will be times when we both need that kind of commitment and love, that kind of feeling about each other that reminds us that we can be everything we want if we stand together and help each other.

As I sat there looking at Roger’s dead goose, my spirits were high, and I noticed that the pit was finally warm.  That old stove in the corner had finally done its job.  As C. S. Lewis once wrote, “There is no sudden, striking, and emotional transition with love.  Like the warming of a room or the coming of daylight.  When you first notice the warmth, it has already been going on for some time.”

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