We were driving through West Virginia last weekend. The countryside was beautiful, the sun was shining, it was porcelain cold on the other side of the windshield glass, snow stretched to the mountains on our right. Farms with humped barns pressed against the highway. As we topped a hill, we noticed something gray and short undulating on each side of the road behind fences. Geese – thousands of them.
They were goose stepping and bobbing their heads like people wearing iPod earbuds. There was a grand pattern to the goose dance, a wave of feathery motion. This was a lot more than a gaggle of geese. This was a hoard of geese.
“Why aren’t they flying?” I wondered. Not even one tried to lift off. They just jerked and weaved across the landscape. It was freaky.
Have you ever seen a big flock of birds descend on a grove of trees and cover the branches in avian darkness? It is otherworldly. This was much stranger. These geese could have filled the mall in DC. I have never seen this much of anything, except fire ants.
The goose gauntlet went on for half a mile like long-necked cattle.
“But they can fly,” I kept saying. They didn’t.
I have seen turkey and chicken farms, but I never thought about geese farms until I Googled it. People like to cook their goose. I figured geese were independent like most birds. They come and go as they please. Not these. They roamed by the thousands with no inclination to leave. We slowed down and I looked into their faces. It is hard to discern a bird’s intentions since their facial expression pretty much consists of wide eyes and a beak. The look could have been joy or horror or pain or nothing. Birds would be great poker players.
Upon entering Leesburg, we pulled up to “Mom’s Apple Pie,” a bakery rumored to have the best apple pie available on any given day pretty much everywhere. Turns out Mom sells a lot more than apple pies. She had all kinds of pies. I stared at the loaded racks and countertops and wanted to ask, “You don’t happen to have goose pie do you?” I just figured, a big wad of geese, then a few miles later, a big pile of pies. It seemed like a viable connection to make at the time.
Nothing looked like goose pie (not that I have ever seen a goose pie), but the apple pie did look wickedly good. So did the sour cherry pie and the chocolate pie and the Boston cream pie and the pecan pie and, well, as I said, there were a lot of pies. I will be making another trip up to Leesburg to purchase a pie, probably apple, maybe key lime when it warms up outside. I will, however, stay away from the goose farm farther west. I am not really sure what is up with that.
(NOTE: Since I wrote this, I returned to Mom’s and devoured a sour cherry pie. They are not paying me to say this (although I will take a few free pies if Mom is so inclined), but it was damned fine pie (to steal language from David Lynch in Twin Peaks. Go to Leesburg and check it out.)
