Petoskey — The great goose debate: Do you hate them or love them? Do you want them hunted down and killed, the population brought to heel, the goose poop off the lawns, and the honking silenced once and for all? Or do you love our feathered friends who fly across our northern skies every year on their migration to warmer climes?
It’s a migration I wish I took myself. Geese, take me with you. Please, take me with you.
The argument of the goose hater is based primarily on surging population numbers. At one point, Canadian geese were just about extinct in Michigan. It was a sad state of affairs. But since that low point in the middle of the 20th century, the population has surged. The state estimates there may be more than 300,000 geese in Michigan every year. The goose haters claim posit this large number is ecologically untenable and menacing for Michiganders. They also claim that these numerous geese have even brought increased numbers of bird flu to the state.
The arguments of the goose haters are legitimate. I understand them and sympathize. If the incredible numbers of geese are bringing bird flu, the geese have to go, or at least some have to. No questions asked. Our (human) health matters most. Hunters should be able to shoot them on their own land. They shouldn’t need to acquire any special permit from the state. That’s a no-brainer. If the geese are invading, it’s the right of the goose hater to protest with the bullet and the gun. Be gone, geese!
And yet, though I understand the goose hater’s position, I am a goose lover.
I’m no green-freak who thinks animals matter more than humans. I’m not a fan of PETA. I don’t think it’s horrifying or “mean”—what are we 8 years old?—that people want to curb the growth of the goose population by way of methodical elimination. It’s not cruel to kill geese, it’s our right to do it if we want to. God gave us dominion over the animals. That means stewardship, and that, sometimes, includes culling. I’m a goose lover for reasons that are personal, natural, spiritual, and artistic.
I love the geese because I think they are beautiful.
Up in the northwest corner of the Lower Peninsula, on Little Traverse Bay, there are incredible numbers of geese that fly over our little town every fading autumn. Until I moved up here I had never seen anything like it. I grew up in West Michigan and we didn’t have nearly as much migration down there. Not even close. I’m not sure I ever remember seeing too many down on the lakeshore south of Manistee. But up here in the tip of the mitten, it’s every evening, like clockwork. The leaves fade and fall, and the geese come flying.
When my wife is getting dinner ready and the kids are outside playing, we hear their faint honking in the east. Gaggles of them together. One of the kids yells, “Geese!” And we all look around and up into the sky, searching. Finally we see them, flying right over the house in their floating V, with a few stragglers always lagging behind. We all stand there silently, watching as they pass. Art in life.
Sometimes they fly so low we can hear their wings flapping. It’s a high-pitched, flat, almost-squeaking sound. It’s an incredible thing, but you can’t hear it if you are surrounded by the hustle and bustle of technological civilization. You can only hear that soft flapping in the air if you are quiet, and you are somewhere quiet, completely quiet.
There’s a cornfield northeast of town where some of the geese stop every evening. They come sailing in over the farmland. A white barn near a slow four-way stop, a farmhouse surrounded by plowed fields. The little figures floating in the pink sky. They swirl around the large field in loose circles, finally all coming to land together, squawking.
When summer is ending, knowing that we will soon see the geese flying overhead makes me a little less sad for the coming days of ice. All our children were born in late autumn, and every time the geese were above flying on their way. Once, years ago, one of our kids pointed up at the geese on one of those evenings outside before dinner and said, “They are flying to a new home!” It was sweet and innocent. A child’s encounter with the beauty of the natural world. It’s one of the reasons we live where we live: so they can have that. The geese, and their yearly migration, bring memories. They are some reminder of passing time.
The geese, flying in the way they were created to fly without knowing why or how they do, are a reminder of the perfect work of God’s hand. We humans were tasked with a big job and we fail a lot. We mess up more than we should. We think we know more than we do. Free will does that.
Standing with my rubber boots on cold soil newly littered with decaying leaves, painfully aware of the chaos and problems of our human world, I always stop and watch those geese flying across our empty sky, toward the setting sun.
I think about how perfect they are, how beautiful God’s creation is, how unaware they are of us down here, and how we and all our incredible civilization could all disappear in a flash one day and they would still keep flying over Little Traverse Bay next year, and the year after, and the year after that, just like they were created to do. And I think that’s painfully beautiful.
O.W. Root is a writer based in Northern Michigan, with a focus on nature, food, style, and culture. Follow him on X @owroot.
