DocAndersen
I know that I had at many different times looked out on our old backyard to the pond beyond. On that pond, there was always something. From fisherpeople seeking fish that other fisherpeople had left before to other wildlife. Beavers, Muskrat, Blue Heron, and of course the Geese. Where begins a story of something that I have wondered about for many years. First off, Canadian by birth, the snow geese come south for the winter.
My grandparents used to go south for the winter. They didn’t stop in Indiana and waited. The Geese are standing on the slowly forming ice of our pond. They went to Florida. What quirk, what genetic error makes Canadian Snow Geese think Indiana is warm in the winter. Standing on the growing ice do they not wonder the genetic lottery? A baby goose, its first summer complete in Canada, packing its emotional bags to fly south, asking why Indiana?
Should we not, mother and father, fly instead to the Caribbean? Where the warm water and warm sun never fall from the sky as snow? Why instead do we go to a place, south of where we live in the summer, but still cold? The imprinted logic of genetic decision making leaving the answer to that question a parental “because.” The younger Goose is asking again now gaining the parental “because that is what I told you.” It is a question that I have wondered for many years. Sadly, now you have to wonder about me!
