Geese are great to have around, because they stir the air. They are sagacious, contentious, storm-loving, and beautiful. They are natural hecklers, delight in arguing a point, and are possessed of a truly remarkable sense of ingratitude. They never fail to greet you on your arrival, and the greeting is tinged with distaste and sarcasm. They take parenthood seriously, are protective of their young but never indulgent. When my young gander is impatient for grain, he seizes the food-box in his mouth and bangs it against the wall, and this racket can be heard all over the place. You've never seen a hen do anything like that. Another fine thing about geese is that they are as easily steered as a modern car -- a great convenience. Their bowel activity is, of course, legendary.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Monday, April 09, 2007
Geese
E.B. White, Letter to Mason Trowbridge (Nov. 18, 1972):