Mother goose rests her nest in the most nest worthy place she can find, nestling it where her nestlings will be protected from threat and disturbance, intruder and pest. Every mother goose wants her nesting spot to be the best! Or at least the best she can come up with in the moment, when she knows “it’s time.” There’s the best and then there are the rest, and therein lies a vast range of possibilities, from the sublime to the absurd to the most unexpected and seemingly unacceptable, but if you’re neither a goose nor a mother, who are you to judge?
Think about it: it’s a wide and wonderful world full of geese out there, and like so many birds of the same feather, what is it they do? That’s right, they flock together! And if you happen to be a member of that mighty goose flock known as the Canada, your numbers can be awesome indeed, spread across ponds and fields, parks and golf courses everywhere, at least in North America. In that mythical beginning when the First Geese were told to go forth and multiply, it was a message the first Canadas took very very seriously, and now look what’s happened!
Which is both wonderful and problematic in so many ways, ways that shall not be belabored here, save for one, the obvious challenge that arises when too many mother geese need that perfect nesting place all at once. In some places, vast countrysides offer multitudes of waterside nesting opportunities, like the prairie potholes of the northern midwest or watery spaces in the vast boreal forest, to name but a few. It is there that a goose might have a relatively easy time coming up with the appropriate real estate when the need arises. So many good if not great choices! Take your pick, madame goose!
But ah, the wicket gets a bit stickier for that mother goose who finds her flock settled in some less than spacious environment, which happens to be most urban areas in North America, crowded places by their very nature. Geese are definitely at home in the city; just ask any urban denizen of the human persuasion who’s encountered the telltale reminder of overwhelming goose presence on the bottom of their shoe, that stuff the big honkers inevitably deposit in all innocence but which results in the greatest unpleasantness for the unsuspecting wanderer. “That shit is everywhere!” they’ll lament to you (the wanderers, not the geese), but what is germane here is that it is also a measure of just how darn many geese there are, all of them concentrated in whatever goose-friendly spaces they can find.
And although that very concentration may for the most part be unproblematic, just wait until nesting time, which happens to be now in these parts. If geese are everywhere, it follows that mother geese, following nature’s call to promote the future of the species, have established places to do this in many parts of that everywhere. But where? To their great credit, given all such places spread over the goose-worthy urban landscape in a city like Boston – the parks and golf courses and wet urban wilds – it is remarkable how so many nests tend to go unnoticed, cleverly and discreetly placed as they are. In fact it is entirely possible many human occupants of the city, who live their entire lives surrounded by all these geese with whom they’ve achieved peaceful co-existence – a circumstance they manage most politely, giving the big birds lots of room while also scrupulously watching where they step – have never seen a Canada on a nest. With even the slightest interest and a little bit of looking in the likely places at the right time, finding a nest is easily achievable, but frankly almost nobody bothers to do this.
And then every so often, for those who’ve looked without success as well as those who’ve never bothered, a nest will turn up of the in-your-face variety, reminding one of how crowded the city truly is, and how nesting space, same as human living space, is in very short supply. Birds of the smaller variety, like house sparrows and robins, have nested on both the front and back porches of our apartment in plain sight, which is not nature’s usual arboreal way. At least there is some discretion in simply being small and unobtrusive, and maybe they know that. But a goose on its nest in the most visible of very public places is another matter entirely, especially when the location demands that somebody place a saw horse nearby with the notice “Nesting Geese STAY BACK” affixed across the top. Is the mother goose in question thankful for this no doubt well-meaning gesture? Chances are she had no say in the matter, and she’s also not talking now.
The odd little scene depicted here was encountered following this writer’s nearby medical appointment in the Longwood Medical Area, and therein lies both its logic and remarkable aspect. The logic of it stems from the fact that the location is but a quarter mile or so from the Muddy River, goose-friendly habitat of the best kind, despite its very urban course of travel. As the map shows, the Muddy is a major link in Boston’s well known “Emerald Necklace,” flowing several miles from Jamaica Pond to its entry into the mighty Charles which then flows to the sea. From that point the necklace continues, riverless, along the Commonwealth Avenue Mall all the way to Boston Common. But what matters more to a goose is that upstream a ways the Muddy passes through Leverett Pond in the section known as Olmsted Park, then through a narrower stretch called the Riverway, and finally a broad section of genuine marshland, reeds and cattails and such, known as the Back Bay Fens. Besides being fabulous nesting habitat for birds of all feathers, the Fens is also home to a well known big league baseball park that shall go unnamed, and the equally excellent Museum of Fine Arts.
But the goose and the scene in question are to be found in the Longwood Medical and Academic Area, adjacent to the Riverway section of the Muddy, though in terms of ambience and nest worthiness, compared to a river, one is a universe away. Maybe you’ve a “medical complex” of some sort in your town or city, where your friendly family medical provider is located or is the place where that doc or nurse or whatever sends you to see specialists. Please understand that as impressive as your medical complex or center or whatever might be, chances are it does not begin to approach the scale and awesomeness of Longwood. For this is Boston, one of the premier medical cities of the world, which demands that Longwood be a medical center on steroids, home to at least four entire hospital complexes (Brigham and Women’s, Children’s, Beth Israel, New England Deaconess) and a major cancer center (Dana Farber), as well as Harvard Medical School. There has been a building boom in this neighborhood for at least four decades that continues apace, and what you have is one of the busiest places in the city when it comes to vehicular and foot traffic. This includes countless ambulances with their sirens blaring, not to mention the occasional helicopter landing on a roof nearby. That, friends, is where this particular goose has placed her nest. So is it desperation, or insanity, or is it possible this poor animal is deaf? Which, when one thinks about it, might be a blessing, but what about the children? If this is a case where necessity is the mother of invention, isn’t mother being a bit perverse, here?
To ease the shock of this encounter, and to restore some sense of what the natural order is all about, it helps to venture downstream, take a little stroll or casual bicycle trip through the Back Bay Fens. Like most “natural” parts of the city of Boston, especially true of waterways like the Muddy and the Charles, the unfortunate historical tendency to build busy major thoroughfares along one or both banks is most evident, and a scourge. Boston is not alone in this practice; this writer has most unfond memories of Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, and he can only guess at how much this practice tarnishes waterfronts around the world. The city of Paris made big news when it permanently closed a major road along the Seine (Paris drivers are still complaining) and it took an earthquake to finally kill the Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco. The motorists of the world have clout, and don’t relinquish territory easily.
But the humble Muddy River, for the most part, does provide a continuous if sometimes narrow and hemmed-in parkland, enjoyed by the unmotorized wanderers along its banks as well as paddling in its waters, which includes more than a few geese, as well as many a duck and other waterfowl. And thank God one can find goose mothers nesting in all manner of natural glory, just a short paddle away from the Longwood Medical Area. They have not exactly found complete peace and quiet, but nothing compared to the mother starting her family in Longwood. The medical area has, in fact, been host to similar acts of goose-desperation over the years, and perhaps that mother knows exactly what she is doing in her stab at achieving notoriety. When it comes down to it, who knows what lurks in the minds of geese such as she?
The ongoing process of homo sapiens encroaching more and more on the other species with whom we share the planet has been going on since forever, and the North American model of endless sprawl continues apace, especially in the American west where the forests and the deserts provide cheap land for those forced out of the expensive housing of the urban centers. Of course that is now, but who knows how many countless native species were driven out back when the Europeans began spreading across the continent? The extinction of the passenger pigeon and near decimation of the native buffalo are just a couple of cautionary tales of which there are all too many.
So maybe those Canada goose and any species still making it in the urban jungle should be considered a success story. There are those who might have a few reservations when it comes to cheering about rats and coyotes, but hopefully they’re a bit more accepting of skunks and raccoons and possums and squirrels and chipmunks and such. And believe it, friends, they’re all around us, even if you personally are clueless about this. It is also a fact that birds like house sparrows and finches and of course pigeons and doves and robins thrive around human habitation, in a way as in-your-face as our goose friend, while raptor species like red-tailed and Cooper’s hawks and even owls thrive, while maintaining a subtle presence. Nothing need be said about the wild turkey, on the increase more than any other bird species in the state, except perhaps to remind you to stay the heck out of their way when you see them, though rest assured they’ll remind you if you forget.
So should we feel bad for the mother goose in question? Who is, after all, just another creature trying to make it in the city, and who deserves much credit for taking matters into her own hands when it comes to finding shelter in a place where so many struggle with that issue, both human and otherwise? Is she thankful to whoever posted that saw horse sign, someone who felt she deserved some kind of protection from whatever threats to her privacy might pass by on the sidewalk, there in the busy and crowded Longwood Medical Area? Could it be she was an actress in a former life, and what we are seeing is a goose’s interpretation of Blanche Dubois’ famous line “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers”? Who’s to say?
