Evans’ Rag

Vol 2 Issue 17

Why You Need To Do It? 

Why you need to
do it –wipe my paws?
Not like you didn’t see

this whole long walk
me splashing in the rain
one leash away

–why wipe my back
like it’s so different
from an hour before now

when we were slogging
through the neighborhood
and chased that cat?

You showing me love
wiping down my nose
–I’ll do better next time, promise.

Geese in Love

This spring it appears the Canadian geese couple have finally, after years, succeeded in finding a nesting site. Across the cove from us and under a small deck elevated above the lake by a foot at most. It’s an odd place to be sure. One sits the egg in secret under the deck, and the other patrols the cove honking at any other geese who should be so rude as to appear. There must be a bit of dry land at the far end of the deck, even if I can’t see it. The foxes and raccoons can’t reach it under there, so I suppose the egg’s safe; the geese seem to think so.

Years ago when they first arrived, the lovely couple settled on a neighbor’s pontoon boat canopy, flying in like feathered jets landing on an aircraft carrier bravely honking. The flat canopy is made of aluminum like the rest of the boat. Built a nest of sorts up there, and even produced an egg, though it was a poor choice of locations. I watched the owners come down the hill one day and take the boat for a ride. They had to know the goose was there–hard to miss a thirty pound bird on your boat, and yet they sailed away with said goose sitting her egg just over their heads. She didn’t remain long, but flew off honking. Then for a half an hour she and the husband goose circled the empty cove, visibly plaintive, and abruptly that ended the year’s attempt at aviary procreation.

I’m not a goose connoisseur, cognoscente as it were. But two things about geese: one, they mate for life, and two, more related to the topic at hand, Canadian geese return year after year to the same place to nest—after flying a thousand miles from wherever—my guess is Canada. The nest location is imprinted on their little bird brains, or do geese use the Google maps app?

The following year, the lovely couple returned, and attempted a second go-round on the boat canopy, getting as far as building their nest—a decided labor of love—before our neighbors threw a plastic tarp over it. The tarp seemed to discourage them. Then, because the wind was catching the tarp when it blew, the neighbors loaded it down with several piles of bricks. Very spiffy.

I wanted to yell at them to leave that mother goose be, but thought if they were as dense as they acted, it would hardly do any good to point out something so obvious. And it was a decidly goofy sight watching a dowdy looking pontoon boat draped with a brown tarp and bricks like ballast piles go sailing out onto the lake. Bird brains, and by no means do I mean to impugn the geese.

That was easily eight years ago. And it may well be that this year’s geese aren’t the same couple, but Canadians (of the goose persuasion) have a lifespan of twenty or more years, so it’s possible we’re still seeing the original lovely couple.

It’s touching to think they finally found a nesting site–though when the gosling(s) arrive, they’ll be imprinted with this cove as well… Boy, are they’re noisy creatures, flapping their wings and honking, and the paté deposited on the lawn can be an attractive nuisance for certain of the canine community.

To make matters worse, the damn beaver–or rather the damming beaver–is nosing around the cove again, scouting out trees to nosh on, the sonofabitch. Nosing quite literately–all you see is his broad beam snout with the rest of his fat ass below the waterline.

In the Commonwealth of Virginia you can trap and release raccoons legally, but you can’t trap and release beavers, according to one trapper I called when Mr. Beaver was chewing our redbuds down to nubs one at a time.

Evidently farmers despise them as much as I do, and they got to the state legislature first. I suppose I could shoot the sonofabitch, except you can’t discharge firearms inside the Beltway, and I’d be left with wrestling a dead sixty-pounder out of the lake. I’ve never learned how to skin beaver. Besides, the nesting geese would startle at the gunshot.

Leave nesting geese to lay as the expression goes.

This week in deep Covid-19, I watched a robin build a nest under our deck, then a second. Now it’s on its sixth nest, all in a line, one per joist. I think we have an avian polygamist–a bird from Utah who hasn’t gotten word from the Mormon Church yet.

Then I dreamed of this bad pun, so I’m going to pass it on ‘cause I’m spiritual that way. Seems a woman who worked with my mother in that ti-iny room of a place in Sumter was a punster, so I’m passing this one along in her memory:

“In the most bitter part of the French Revolution, they captured a singularly important nobleman. They put him to the torture day after day, rack, whip you name it.

Yo, bro, you talking?—NO! and so on.

So they finally led him to the guillotine, mob cheering like they always did back then—they don’t do that now—and they asked him one more time. He just smiled and they hung his worthless ass.”

So I took the bait, WHAT HAPPENED?

“Don’t hatchet your counts before they chicken.”

I told you—the woman loved puns.