Count 'em and weep

It was too warm for November. The sun was shining brightly. The sky was reflected in the river – sky blue. A pale half moon was rising over the horizon.

As I crossed the Kaw River Bridge, I was feeling very lucky.

And that’s when I saw the geese.

They were all lined up, one by one, on top of the Bowersock Dam. Now if you’ve been watching the river – and I even watched the Bowersock folk building that dam – and you understand that the river is variable – it will make some sense to you that the Bowersock dam is topped with a series of black rubber inner tubes each about forty or fifty feet long and 6 feet or so in diameter when they are inflated so that they will hold the river back and keep the mill pond at a certain level. Which they were. Tubes inflated.

But it seemed quite odd to me to see the geese all lined up along the top of one of those inflated black rubber inner tubes in the late afternoon sunlight. And then in occurred to me that I could play blackjack with the geese.

I started counting. One goose, two goose,  three goose, four goose … there was some crap on the black rubber inner tube … five goose, six goose, seven goose, eight goose … cars drove over the bridge, their emissions unseen … nine goose, ten goose, eleven goose, twelve goose … an ambulance screamed past me on the bridge … thirteen goose, fourteen goose, fifteen goose, sixteen goose … a firetruck followed, sirens wailing and lights flashing as if it were headed to an emergency or something … seventeen goose, eighteen goose, nineteen goose, twenty goose.

I should have stayed right there. There was another goose swimming in the mill pond just this side of the dam and several more not that far away.

And the then the swimming goose honked up at me on the bridge.

“What are you looking at?”

I was stunned. I had just been idling my life away, playing a little blackjack, counting geese on the Bowersock Dam. But I hadn’t counted on this.

“Who wants to know?” I stammered back. I had insufficient wit for a better rejoinder.

“The name’s ‘Black Jack.’ I’m from Canada.” He paused, looking around. “Sure is warm for this time of year.”

“Yeah,” I managed.

“Don’t you know about the game?”

“What game?” I hesitated.

“The climate game, fool,’ Black Jack honked. He wasn’t apparently trying very hard to be nice.

“Uh, the climate’s not a game, Mr. Jack,” I said.

“The way you humans are playing the climate, it is, fool,” Black Jack answered. “You’re such gamblers – and bad ones at that. One emission over the number and you lose.”

“What’s the number?” I asked.

“No one knows for sure,” he said, “That’s why you’re a fool for thinking you can careen right up to the brink of disaster and then expect to stop just in time.”

“Well, it’s not just me,” I said.

“Right. You drive a car. You have electricity. You get your strawberries shipped in from Chile or someplace. And don’t try to tell me that your cow’s farts don’t stink. Fool.”

“But I’m just one person,” I said.

“Right, and when enough of you ‘one persons’ decide to get their shit together, you can send a human all the way to that moon over there – and back safely. Black Jack honked derisively. “Fool. What’s the point of having a government at all if you don’t use it for important things. Get together.”

“But it’s not that simple,” I said.

“Who said anything about simple,” Black Jack said. “We geese fly south for the winter, back north to have and raise our families. All on our own power. And not one goose at a time. But it’s no walk in the park, let me tell you.”

Black Jack honked. And the whole line of geese behind him joined in. “The word among the intelligent life on this planet is that you humans – individually and collectively – are not smart enough not to fowl your own nest (pardon the pun, (he honked)). You’re fools.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. I knew I when I had been insulted. I walked away.

But I couldn’t help myself. I turned back to the dam. I could at least win at goose-on-a-dam blackjack. I counted again. Damn. Twenty-two gooses. Geese. Collectively. Individually, it was twenty-two gooses and one fool.

I hollered down. Black Jack was sitting on the dam, one goose from the end of the line. “I’ve always wondered something about geese. You know how you fly in a V formation?”

“Of course we know about that. Wind resistance. Efficiency. Conservation of energy. Any goose knows about that.”

“No, I know. I mean... When I see you flying overhead, it always seems as if one leg of the V is longer than the other. Why’s that?”

If you’ve ever seen a goose shake his head slowly from side to side while sitting on the inflated black rubber inner tube of the Bowersock Dam on a warm November afternoon, you’ll believe me when I tell you what that goose said.

“There’s more geese flying in that leg of the V, fool.”