How well do you know me?
Late this afternoon I was driving down a two lane suburban road on my way home from an errand. Suddenly, a flock of Canada geese decided to take a walk across the road in front of me. Flock is probably the wrong word because a flock of birds implies flight. These birds walk. They always walk. This is my local flock. They’re lazy. They live on a drainage pond that was dug out of regolith to catch the storm water runoff from a new housing development. Seems they stopped for an overnight rest while migrating south one winter and decided that migration was overrated. They’ve been here ever since. This pond is good enough, they decided using their own goose logic. It gets cold here in the winter, but apparently not cold enough to warrant the long flight to warmer equatorial climes. Now, they spend their days floating on the pond and walking across the road to the county park on the other side. The county maintains the park as a working farm. A museum to farming where the high tech geeks who bought the half million dollar houses across the street can bring their children and show them cows and tractors – children more accustomed to seeing golden labs and Audi TTs. The geese don’t know about the park being a museum. They only know that the county grows corn over there (so the children can see where corn comes from before mommy picks it up at the Safeway). These geese like the fact that the corn field is so close to the pond. Food and shelter side-by-side. It’s a good goose life. So they’re not in a hurry. They walk.
That was kind of a long introduction to ask this question. Driving down the road and facing a dozen or so lazy, good-for-nothing geese that have lost their instinct to migrate, laggardly crossing the road to feed on the corn, grown and paid for with my tax dollar, so that rich, over-privileged children can learn about farming from the comfort of their imported Italian baby strollers, do I:
- Stop the car and wait until they are safely on the other side.
- Hit the gas and kick up a cloud of feathers and goose guts.
- Slow down so as not to cause the birds any harm but maintain enough speed to force them to fly and remind them that their lives are too damn easy.
- Reach in the glove compartment, pull out my 45 caliber handgun and bring home goose for dinner.
- Check out the Swedish nanny in the tube top who is watching the spectacle from the sidewalk.
- Wish I didn’t fixate on the minutia of life and just talked on the cell phone all the time like everybody else.
What did I do? If you know me, the answer is obvious.
12:02:17 AM 
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