The chick is a frail collection of feathers and fluff. Its feet are the size of a sparrow’s. Its wings flap uselessly, and among the grasses, it is no higher than the smallest clovers. It frantically follows the goose everywhere. She doesn’t get it. She is harried, and runs. Leaves it cheeping pitifully in the middle of the green lawn and lifts into the air with her huge wings, flapping towards the galvanized tub of water that we fill for her. She plunges in, water falling off her feathers like glass beads.
The chick cries for her, its down growing damp in the dewy grass, but when we take it indoors, offer it the warmth of our hands, food, fresh water, it refuses and cries mournfully and loudly for the goose.
I want desperately to get involved, rescue it, and fix whatever is wrong. I also want desperately to do away with the entire thing. The chick. The goose. The whole business was a disaster from the start. Something I didn’t think through or consider when I let the broody goose sit on stolen eggs, and now here we are.
The chick is unbearably loud with its cheeping. You can hear it through the closed windows. The goose is louder. All morning it’s a back and forth as the tiny little thing tries to follow its mama about. She knows it is her baby, maybe. She makes soft throaty noises when its near. She lets it sleep on her back after she’s through with preening. But she steps on it just the same, with her huge orange feet.
Somehow, improbably, it has survived four days. The days seem inconceivably long. It seems impossibly small. I brought it indoors and kept it in a box where it was warm for a while, when I saw that it could no longer follow her about in the rain drenched grass, but it drove me crazy with its pining.
Finally I lured the goose back to the nest with another egg—we had confiscated the others that she stole. And though she doesn’t get how to care for the chick, really, she is a sucker for eggs, going immediately to the nest and plopping chest first onto the soft circle of hay I’ve made. Her instincts only half intact. I get it.
I watch her with empathy and contempt. You stepped on your baby, you stupid thing. I want to scream at her, as for the tenth time I waver, decide to intervene, scoop the chick up, offer it water from a jelly jar lid. But just the same, I reach for her, and stroke her long shaking neck. I know what it feels like to want to just fly away.
Too true. This is so well written and really hits a chord with me today.
Nice.
You nailed it alright. A perfect analogy.
really lovely writing…so much to drink in.
I remember stepping on my own kids with my huge orange feet. They are ALL so small, aren’t they?
Beautifully written.
Would one of the hens take care of it? (I don’t keep fowl, so don’t really know, but maybe if you had a hen that was brooding, and this little chick appeared, she would think it was hers? That said, it may be harder to convince the chick of that…)
oh poor little thing. all i could think of while reading this is little hyla following me around saying “mama mama mama mama” and me getting aggrevated for some STUPID reason. poor little chick. poor stupid mama.
ps – reminds me so much of barbara kingsolver’s adventures with fowl in “aminal, vegetable, miracle.”