After Dorothy found that Knees adored having fresh grass pulled for her, she developed a con-artist sound, a tiny, inquisitive, plaintive queeping, head tilted, leaning hesitantly toward the thicket where the good grass grew, and which she dared not enter. Pull the poor little goose some grass.
There were the almost inaudible little peeps she made when composing herself for sleep. There were the huge series of trumpeted quonkings giving warning of anyone or anything coming by land or by sea — in the daylight.
There was the guttural little sound she made while preening and combing herself after the elaborate daily bath, a kind of expression of diligence and satisfaction.
It surprised us to learn that geese yawn and also snore.
The one kind of conversation which most intrigued us cannot be explained without discussing her daily routine. After the kids left she took over a small, shallow bay directly in front of the house. It lies to the left of the small, thickety peninsula leading to the dock. A spur of rock runs off to the left, making her bay into a U with the opening to the left, a U about ten feet across and ten feet long. Her dish was on the sand rim of the U opposite the opening.
Geese apparently have phenomenal eyesight and hearing. In the flock they must somehow have a rotating-duty system for the sentry geese. Being a one-goose flock is a very serious and exhausting business indeed. She was very white. She was such an impressive, blazing white that even by starlight we could see her out there standing on the end of the dock, no matter at what time of night we looked out, head very high, tense and alert and sleepless. We learned she seemed a lot more relaxed if we left the floodlights turned on. They did not reach that far, but at least she seemed to feel she could not see anything that might be coming after her from the bushes.
In the daytime if you called to her, you would get the big, jolly QUANK routine. If you called to her at night, you would get an answer you could just barely hear. And so we fell into the habit of going down there each night to say good night to the goose. Her conversation was hilarious. It was a variation of the daytime excited gabbling, but it was carried on in such a hushed tone, it was exactly like a person whispering. She would keep turning her head from side to side, inspecting the darkness about, and she was obviously telling us of all the horrors lurking about It was such a convincing performance we would find ourselves talking very quietly too. One night she got so carried away with her recital of terrors, she gave out with one great, shocking, rusty QUONK that frightened her into an abrupt silence. She listened for a long time, then began muttering to us again.
One night we saw her down there floating in her little bay. We spoke, and there was absolutely no response. We went down to the waters edge. Still without a sound she came out of the water and paddled around behind me and stood leaning against me and looking out around my leg. Only then did she make the faintest of sounds, and it seemed like controlled hysteria. She could not have said, more clearly, “It’s really after me tonight” She came back up to the house with us, glancing back, talking more bravely. I lifted her onto the deck. She went at once to the screen door to be let in. We let her in with certain reluctance. The venerable expression — loose as a goose — is soundly anchored to reality. But we couldn’t leave her out there. We piled furniture to keep her sequestered in the kitchen and bedroom hallway area and paved it with newspapers. Once inside she talked ever more loudly. When she began to settle down we went to bed, leaving our bedroom door wedged open about three inches so we could hear her if she got tangled up in anything out there. In bed, we heard her come flapping along the hall, muttering. She stuck her head through the three-inch gap, extended the full length of her long white neck, gave one huge, jolly, ear-shattering QUANK, and then padded back to the kitchen. That night we heard a wildcat scream.
We were afraid a precedent had been set, but that was the only night all summer long she demanded refuge. I don’t think she was kidding.
In daytime excited talk she loved to have Dorothy quabble back at her, and she would put that bill an inch from Dorothy’s lips, and they would go it at a great rate, Knees getting more and more agitated.
She did a lot of sleeping each morning, from first light on, catching up from the night’s vigil, standing on one ridiculous foot, head laid along her back. By mid-morning she was hearty and cheerful. Because of a large and very shallow rocky shelf about 150 feet off our shore, I mark it with a buoy each summer to keep water skiers from bursting their primitive skulls upon it, and as a guide to friends visiting in their boats. The buoy is round, larger than a basketball, and floats high, painted half red and half white, the white side uppermost as it floats. Day after day, Knees would swim out, particularly when the lake had a slight chop, and float right beside that buoy, bobbing up and down with it. I imagine that, driven by the flock instinct, it was the nearest thing to another goose she could find.
The daily ablution, performed in her little bay, was extensive. She would dip her head in a manner that would lift water up and send it running down her back, pausing to dig at herself, ruffle herself up, send small feathers drifting downwind. After at least ten minutes of this, she would do surface dives and swim underwater, going outside her bay and swimming ten and fifteen feet at a time, visible from the dock as a swift, white, and very graceful shape. If, as Anne discovered, people would gather around, clap their hands, and say Good Goose, she could be induced to keep the underwater act up for much longer than usual. After this portion of the routine, she would stand at the end of the rock ridge and preen herself for a half hour. There are oil glands under their wings, and these secretions are used to smooth down each feather. Twice in the summer some motorboat oil drifted in, giving her a ring like a nasty bathtub. Each time she just kept washing over and over until it was gone, hour after hour of effort.
The first time the merganser family came along, Knees became terribly excited. She went after them, big white wings flapping, big web feet running along the surface of the water, neck outstretched, honking enthusiastic greetings. At this apparition, the ducks took off like rockets. She sat on the water and watched them go and paddled back to her bay. After that, she never paid the slightest bit of attention to them. She gave no evidence of hearing them or seeing them even when they passed within ten feet of the end of the dock.
No one in the family could go out in a boat without Knees insisting on coming along. Rowboat, kicker-boat, canoe, sailboat, her self-assigned place was in the bow, standing tall, honking at everything in sight. Dorothy has a water bicycle at the lake which she uses during the last of the daylight. When she took it out, Knees would come paddling along, hollering. Dorothy would stop; Knees would flounder up onto one of the aluminum pontoons, and off they would go into the sunset. But on the water bike, Knees was usually very silent. She would make some sotto voce comments, watch the shore carefully, then manage to fall off as awkwardly as possible when they returned to the little bay.
People liked to either troll slowly for bass out beyond our rocks, or anchor and fish. Knees trumpeted at every passing boat. The very slow ones and the ones which anchored got her so excited she could not contain herself. Sooner or later she would take off in that dead run, that half-flying, half-running zoom across the top of the water right at the boat. Reaching it she would settle down and then merely circle it if it was anchored, or go along with it if it was trolling, quabbling loudly. The smart fishermen learned they either had to lift her into the boat or go fish somewhere else. Once in an early morning mist she went so far down the lake shore, escorting some fishermen, I could no longer see her or them from the dock. But I could hear her, and I could hear the plaintive voice of the fisherman overriding hers, pleading, “Go home, duck! For God’s sake, go home!”