The Pin Test

The war against the geese has not been going well. Mrs. Cheney decided to nest right beneath the owl; Cheney is attacking anyone who comes within a thirty-foot radius. We have to walk right through his territory to get to Mazurka.

This year he’s more aggressive than the last – he comes back repeatedly, and will hover mid-air, attacking you as if he’s a hot air balloon. No, hot air balloon is too friendly – think more Nazi zeppelin. Sunday afternoon, Mark’s out there boxing with airborne Cheney, while the Mrs. stands beside her nest, not leaving it for a second. They are steadfast parents, to be sure. Once we get to the other side, we find an audience of three teenagers hanging out in the warm spring afternoon. “Looks like an attack bird,” one of them says to us. They're laughing; they’ve been watching Cheney attack people all afternoon.

It’s hard to describe how much this bothers me. I’m not afraid of animals – I like spiders, I can tolerate snakes, and unless it’s a bear, I won’t carry mace. But I don’t like the idea of being repeatedly attacked every time I walk to or from my home.

So I came up with an alternative plan: “I’m going to row the dinghy to the other dock,” I told Mark, "and avoid them altogether."

My husband thinks this is unneccessary, and keeps trying to convince me it isn’t that bad. Monday morning, leaving for work, he says, “I’m going to use the pin test.” He puts a safety pin between his fingers and out we go. The Cheneys are grazing, away from their nest, and as soon as we get near them, they start squawking and running for their homestead (apparently Mrs. Cheney hasn’t laid eggs yet, or she’d never leave it for a second). She gets up by her nest, while Cheney keeps sweeping down on us, and eventually gets close enough for Mark to stick him with the pin. Cheney lands beside us, stunned, and for a second the four of us all stare at each other – what just happened? Then Cheney squawks and flies down into the water, but he’s no longer hissing, and we go on our way out to the street.

“The pin test worked,” Mark says, exuberant. “I got the idea from when I was a kid.”

“Why don’t you start carrying the pen knife you did in kindergarten,” I say. I don’t find this all that funny.

“I don’t want to draw blood. The pin hurts just enough, but it won’t draw blood – it will heal before a cut would. I figure a couple more times of the pin test, and he’ll learn to stay away from us. It’s good security, too – nobody in their right mind is going to pass by that goose.”

“Exactly,” I say. “I’m going to start taking the dinghy.”

“Don’t you think that’s extreme?” Mark says.

“As extreme as being attacked every time you leave your boat, and sticking a goose with a pin?”

“Okay,” he agrees, “I’ll get the boat out for you tonight.”

So now, instead of simply walking off the dock to the parking lot, I'm going to pile my stuff into the dinghy and row twenty feet to the opposite dock, tie up, and walk around.

I've lived on Mazurka for six months now. I've weathered bad plumbing, frozen pipes, inclimate weather. I can't believe it's a goose named Cheney who's going to bring me down.

A Snit in the Stern, A Spat in the Aft

My friend the great white-haired photographer is harassing me to write about the fights on board Mazurka. “C’mon, you gotta write about life on Mazurka. You gotta tell us how you fight on board – get to the real stuff – you gotta dig deep!”

The thing is, Mark and I don’t really fight. There are no broken dishes, no screaming, no raising ones voice. Maybe it’s because we’re still newlyweds, or maybe ‘cause we’re both a little older than the 25 year-old just marrieds and we’re still (and hopefully always) invested in seeing each others’ points of view, or maybe it’s because this is a really small space and we pretty much have to get along. But our disagreements – small as they are – are few and far between.

We do have our occasional tiffs, though. The first one happened on board his boat, around midnight, when we were just dating. He was uncharacteristically quiet and cold. I couldn’t figure out what was going on. “I just thought we should slow down a bit,” he said. “Okay,” I fumed, “We’ll slow down.” And I stormed out. It was late, downtown Chicago, and as I walked to the el by myself to go back to my apartment, I kept thinking, “He’ll come after me…he’ll come after me….” I was so mad I got on the train going the wrong way, and had to turn around on the west side to catch a train going up to Wicker Park. I kept thinking, “He’ll be waiting for me at my place.” He wasn’t. The next day, we exchanged a series of emails till we figured out the whole thing was just stupid.

That’s pretty much how our fights go. I feel like he’s not giving me the attention I think I so rightly deserve; I act cold and angry, like I really don’t want his attention, anyway, while of course I’m dying for him to fawn all over me. And then I break down or he breaks down and we’re happy newlyweds again.

Last night was a little different – he was starting in on the generator again, and how the last “mechanic” we’d had out had taken a couple parts off the boat and had yet to return them or return our phone calls. This guy has been the bane of our existence for two weeks, and I was sick of hearing about it. “Just let it go,” I said.

Mark bristled. “I’ll let it go when the generator is fixed.”

So I let it go. I went to the bow and read for a bit, took a six minute shower, was about to climb into bed to read, when I heard him on the phone to someone in his family, complaining about the generator. I heard him say, “Do you want to talk to Felicia? She’s right here,” and he handed me the phone. It was his brother Scott. Scott is married to Jill, who has been my best friend since we were 12 years old, and is the reason I met Mark. Jill is six months pregnant with their first child, and that day had gone for her second round of chemo for a 9 cm tumor they discovered in her breast on Valentine’s Day.

I took the phone and forgot about our tiff, forgot we were getting screwed on the generator, forgot an editor declined the article I’d worked on all weekend, forgot I had gotten another damn parking ticket, forgot that outside Mazurka geese were preparing to dive bomb me. None of that stuff was worth anything, anyway.

You want to get to the real stuff? Life is short. Don’t waste time arguing about stupid shit.

Turf Wars

When I was in graduate school, I lived on Farwell and Ashland in the north side neighborhood of Roger’s Park. Parts of Roger’s Park, right on the lake, are really beautiful – the other parts are run by drugs and gangs. In the four years I lived there, somebody was killed on the Morse el platform every year. Guys would post on every corner, claiming their territory. On my three block walk to the el, I could follow the running of drugs as it passed from somebody’s girlfriend to a young gang member to the car and the buyer (any white guy in a nice car in my neighborhood was only looking for one thing). Once, my best girlfriend was propositioned by a prostitute – we couldn’t figure out if she was joking or not. My boyfriend at the time, who was leaving before dawn for morning shifts at a radio station, was stopped more than once for having his hands in his pockets, and made to prove he wasn’t carrying a gun. I was taking late-night classes downtown and would return home on the el at 11:30 or midnight, bracing myself for the walk home. I reasoned I had as much right to live there as any of the gang members. Nobody ever gave me a hard time.

I was preparing to move anyway when one day, around noon, a kid in red was shot outside my apartment. Within minutes, a whole crowd of more kids dressed in red gathered around him. It took 20 minutes for the ambulance.

In all that time, I never carried mace, never carried pepper spray, never carried any weapon at all. I didn’t want to fight potential violence with more potential violence. I didn’t want to play the role of the scared white girl, even though I was.

Yesterday, however, when I passed by Cheney and his wife, and that damn goose followed me a good thirty feet, hissing and charging and dive bombing me…I called Mark. “Bring the hard stuff.”

He brought home pepper powder, and spread it all over their turf.

I respect Cheney for taking care of his own, protecting his wife and the eggs she’s about to lay. But I refused to be intimidated by gang members and I refuse to be intimidated now by a damn goose, even if he has nested here for twenty years. I will not lose this turf war.

The Geese Are Winning

The owls might as well be sticks wearing flannel fabric for all their power to scare away the geese.

I’ve been watching Mr. Goose with his wife. He has staked out a territory with a 30-foot radius from last year’s nest. When other geese swim into the marina, he comes flying, squawking, dives in, arches his neck, head close to the water, and swims toward them like a shark. The other geese get the hell out of his way. He then goes back to the dock where his wife sits, preening herself, getting ready for the big day with her nest. I don’t know where we get the idea that springtime is all baby bunnies and pastel clouds; it seems more about staking out your territory and attacking anyone who reaches a beak over your border. I’ve nicknamed the goose “Cheney.”

A few afternoons ago I was walking along the dock when Cheney, grazing with his wife on the brown grass beneath the owls, starts hissing at me. Stan comes out and laughs. “I know somebody who uses fake snakes,” he tells me. “Works every year.”

So I trek to the Field Museum and buy three fake water snakes. I tell the cashiers what I intend to do with them; they’re used to selling overpriced seeds and stuffed animals and amethyst; they look at me like I’m crazy. I decorate Mrs. Cheney’s nesting area so that it looks like a snake pit. I’m very pleased with myself. I don’t see the geese out there the rest of the day.

This morning, they’re grazing right alongside the snakes.

Short of a BB gun, this is getting serious.

Bring the Owl

There are two kinds of geese in Chicago – the majority are migratory, and spend their winters in the south, returning each year to hatch the next batch of goslings. They return to the places they’ve had reproductive success in the past, much like we humans return to our honeymoon spots years later. We like the place where love lies – we think it brings us luck.

Unfortunately, Mazurka is surrounded by honeymoon nests.

Now, I had run through geese often enough at the lakefront, and they had dispersed in a friendly, non-aggressive manner, as I figured was due to their understanding that I, as a human runner, was atop the food chain and they would do best to look out.

I learned last spring this was not true.

On the last Sunday in March, I picked up Mark from Midway Airport, where he was returning after spending ten days away. As we rounded the first bend in the dock, a goose came at us, hissing. Mark started after it aggressively. The goose flew off, into the water, where I thought he’d land, but no – he swooped around and came back after us. I covered my head with the stack of mail and newspapers and began to run for the boat, with Mark just behind me. I could hear the flapping of the goose’s wings, and then he was down upon me, the gross and kind of terrifying weight of his large, feathered round body resting down on my head before he swooped off. He didn’t have time to come back for another pass before we were out of his territory, away from the nest, but we kept running, laughing, Mark’s phone ringing - “We’ve just been attacked by a goose!” he announced to the caller.

Thus began the daily fight with Mr. Goose. As we rounded the bend where his wife sat atop her nest, he would charge us on land, or fly off into the water, turn around and come after us. Mark started to charge the goose – not fast, and not violent, just an assertive walking towards him – and the goose hissed but flew off into the water.

One rainy afternoon Mark went ahead, but I found I could not move. The dock was L-shaped, with the nest raised up on the other side of the short leg, overlooking the river. As Mark rounded the corner, I watched the goose come around the short leg, straight for him, and shuddered, unable to watch. But Mark had the right idea, and charged ahead, so that the goose, despite its hissing and ruffling feathers, had no choice but to fly into the water, lest he be run over by a man. After Mark passed through, the goose returned to his post, watching me, halted at the top of the L. I sat down with the umbrella over my head, trying to look casual as I studied the goose, trying to figure out its mindset – can you reason with a goose? Do they learn? After a while, would he grow used to us? Could we ply him with food? Throw sardines at it? What does a goose eat? Mark called me on his cell phone, and though I hated being the scaredy-cat girlfriend, he returned like the ferryman Charon, taking me over the River Styx.

I did some research on goose gestation – an average of 25-30 days. I wondered if maybe the goose would keep me from seeing Mark for a whole month, or that the matter would become violent. I called my Dad. “They’re not that far above fish,” he said. “If it comes after you, just snap its neck.” I imagined crossing the dock, the goose attaching itself to me, fearing that I would have no choice but to grab its neck and kill it, that I would have my first goose like the Babel story.

Instead, I started carrying an umbrella.

I learned it was important not to startle him, so I would make gruff stomping noises. It was best not to look him in the eye, not to acknowledge his presence at all, and never, ever, look at his wife, sitting atop the nest. The goose was always on duty, and often would dive bomb me (so that I raised my umbrella above my head, keeping him a clear distance), or would only hiss meanly, often at night, when he was tired.

One night I passed by without much turmoil, arrived at Mark’s boat, and while standing in the salon, casually looked out the window towards the river and there was the goose, circling in the river, watching me. I ventured out on the dock and stood tall; he circled closer. We stared each other down, the river’s reflection of the Sears Tower lighting our showdown. In the quiet pulse of the central post office late-night business, the quiet din of sleeping factories, this huge tower overlooking us – this was an ancient standoff, irrelevant of the massive city of shoulders enclosing us – this was man against beast.

I researched possible deterrents – plastic or live swans (which people say don’t work), fake alligators for ponds (also said not to work), bright streamers, flags, and balloons, whose color and flapping-in-the-wind noise annoys geese, and my favorite – specially trained dogs.

Border collies are taken out in the morning and afternoons during migration to clear away the geese. And if a flock of geese flying over what looks to be a great area and sees it’s empty of their kind, they’ll think there’s a reason and move on. There’s even a story about a blind and deaf great horned owl who successfully scared away two flocks of geese from the Winnipeg Airport property just by hooting.

Another method of goose reproduction control which is often endorsed by animal rights organization as a humane alternative to slaughter and gassing is “egg addling,” in which the nest is interrupted, eggs are shaken (by humans) and coated with corn oil. Geese do not know the babies in their eggs have been destroyed and they continue incubation. “GeesePeace,” Canadian Wildlife Services, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services all use this practice.

After watching the geese sit on their nests all day and all night, through pouring cold rain, steaming hot sunny afternoons, wind, sleet, and all the while, bracing themselves and settling over their young, this method seems the cruelest torture of all. Can you mentally abuse a goose? If they’re not that far above fish, probably not. But what agony to sit for over a month on a carefully-tended nest, only to see that all your efforts are in vain, and once again, you are without your offspring.

This year, we started planning early. I considered covering the whole area with barbed wire, but Mark said that was a bit extreme. We asked around. Mark’s sister Heidi had the solution: “Get a fake owl.” My Dad gave me one for Christmas. We bought two more, plus dowels to stand them on. They sat in Mark’s trunk until one early March morning, when Mazurka was surrounded by squawking geese, staking out their territory. I called my husband on the phone and gave the code phrase for spring:

“Bring the owl.”

And now, with Mazurka surrounded by three ominous great horned owls, turning on their stands, eyes following you…so far so good. So far.