Six geese a-laying.

Long ago and in a land where satellite dishes are considered to be the state flower, a porky youth with abnormally large hair nearly perished under the steely, unyielding beaks of a trio of trained assassin-geese.

"Old news", some of you interject, partially masticated sustenance dropping in globs from your maw. "So you're going to tell us about the time that a goose nearly murdered you under the 'watchful' gaze of your paternal unit. Let me get back to my knitting/online chess tournament/bong/spy novel/bondage session."

Well, truth be told, I was going to tell that one again because a) it was about two years ago that I'd written it and b) it's exceedingly relevant, as we'd gone to specifically identify nesting geese, for I'd developed a nearly paralyzing interest in eggs. However, there exist among your numbers a few who remain devoted and faithful despite what would appear to be my singular inability to 'blog consistently, and I fear the crushing weight of your cold, stony judgment as much as I fear, say, heavily make-uped flesh-consuming circus entertainers.

As I'd mentioned in a previous post, my grandparents had purchased or otherwise procured three greylag geese to serve and protect the other, potentially more vulnerable fowl on their small farm. As many people are aware, geese are highly respected for their fearlessness and their ability to, as need arises, feck the living daylights out of marauding night-creatures that dare to breach their territory. The Romans revered geese, as it was din created by the Vestal virgins' gaggle of geese that awoke the Roman guardsmen as unkempt Gauls attempted to take the city; later, the dogs who remained asleep on the watch were, erm, ucified-cray. Anyway, long story short: geese are good guards because they are fiercely vindictive, unrelentingly cruel, balefully sleepless, and intuitively understanding of what one would need to do to hurt other living things until they begged for the sweet release of death.

Once one gathered up the fortitude to venture beyond the fenced safety of the front and side yard of the house, it was inevitable that the geese, pressed wing-to-wing and forming a three-headed, hydra-like feathered mass, would be waiting just beyond the gate, feigning disinterest and lathing their tongues over their nonexistent goose-lips in eager anticipation of the melee that would surely result. My grandfather had, in his wisdom, placed a stout walking-stick near the gate which was to be used by his ungrateful, ankle-biting grandchildren to make sure that they weren't able to get close enough to actually snuff any of us, as surely that would have been bad times. However, since there were three of them, they became slowly clever enough to plan velociraptor-style attacks where one or two of them would remain in plain sight while the other hid, hoping you'd turn your young, nutritious back to it. My rule of thumb was, therefore, if I didn't see three of them, I'd climb the other fence - tetanus be damned! - to get out into the pasture and the other parts of the property.

One day, however, I - perhaps under the influence of Benadryl, as I'd often need to take it for several days after I arrived at the homestead - went and unlatched the gate and began to walk toward the barn

without the gee-dee stick

and, incidentally, wearing thong sandals.

I look back on that moment and wonder if, perhaps, it was the voice of Satan as funneled through the hissed whispers of three greylag geese that made me do it. The fact that I'd not procured the stick was bad enough; the flip-flops made the situation lethal, as running would be out of the question in the slick shet-encrusted barnyard. I knew better than to wear them out there, but I was clearly entranced by corporal evil and was being led to an untimely death.

I made my way through the barnyard past the long-abandoned turkey coop and was within several dozen yards of the barn - and safety - when I became acutely aware that my passage had not gone unnoticed. Low at first, but growing steadily in volume, a hissing sound began to emanate from what I'd initially taken to be a smallish gray bush. As three serpentine necks reared out of the "bush", I moistly evacuated into my Rude Dog and the Dweebs jams. (Raise your hand if you remember jams). The largest of the geese detached from the group and it turned one of its infected-wound-yellow eyes toward me. In a moment of what I presume to be stark insanity, I could faintly hear it hiss-speaking to me.

Your mistakes will cost you your tender, delicious life, it said. Your pathetic, battered carcass shall nourish me and mine for a week. Also: jams are SO thirteen seconds ago.

I launched myself toward the barn in fluid motion that I would be unable to replicate in the present day; it involved nearly twisting my spine in twain. It was also at this time that I began to shriek like a seven year old girl who'd fallen into a well in the vain hopes that someone would resond to my pleas for merciful intervention. The goose similarly began its hellish pursuit; possessed of the knowledge that I'd worn my day-glo green flip-flops and that I would most likely avoid flop-piles as best as I could because of them, it lurched forward, beak agape, to snuff me.

As I hurled myself across the barnyard I was overcome with a sense that I should not, as Lot's wife had been unable to resist, turn around. I had just come to the threshold of the barn when something heavy and unspeakably feathery struck me in the small of my back and I fell to the earth face-first, gasping. It was in that moment that I knew that I'd not survive this experience and at once I began to envision what my memorial service would be like: the tiny black coffin containing the four pounds of gristle that the geese had left behind holding court at the front of a black-draped chapel, guilt-stricken, weeping relatives and friends, and a pianist gently hammering out the best of Bruce Hornsby's corpus. I could feel the goose's hot breath in my ear as it prepared to deliver the coup de grace when, suddenly, the weight of the creature was mercifully lifted off my back. I sat up and beheld, wheeling the the heat-shattered heavens, an abnormally large red-tailed hawk; the geese, fearing for their own sky-delivered mortality, had abandoned their fatty treat to clumsily hide themselves in a stand of brush nearby. With only one flip-flop remaining, I clambered into the hayloft and prayed earnestly that the hawk would eviscerate mine enemies.

By dusk, it was noticed that I'd gone missing, and my grandfather found me rapidly rocking myself, muttering incoherently about pâté, in the darkening hayloft.

The eldest, largest goose was to be found for the better part of a week carrying around my other flip-flop in its horrid bill as a grim reminder of its powers. I would gaze upon it from behind the fence, hands clenched around a scythe, with a mixture of fear, hatred and what I later would realize was a strange version of respect. You know, the kind of respect one must have for something that can slaughter you.

In later years, as the geese aged and began to succumb, one by one, to their own delicious mortalities, I found myself rooting for their antagonists with a fervor one generally associates with Latin American soccer devotion. God bless that fox whose gullet was to be filled verily by the largest, slowest goose; finding his wing and a spray of down-feathers in a field caused me to nearly tent up in my pants. God bless the bitter, unrelenting cold that crept into the bones of the next goose, transforming it one night into a twenty-five pound lump of frozen, corporeal evil. God bless the load of buckshot that blew the head off the last of them when it became so old and senile that it broke both of its feet chasing cloud shadows.

And so, on this, the sixth day of Christmas, I am reminded of how a trio of trained goose assasins nearly laid me out for the Big Dirt Nap. You know, because childhood isn't unsafe enough without worrying that you'd pass through the belly of a web-footed, hissing louse-bag.
Whatever.

Until later, I remain,

Domonic (Iwillfinishthisblogseriesevenifitkillsme) Potorti