Once upon a time, when I worked for a living, I walked to the bus stop around the corner every weekday morning in all weathers---rain, snow, sleet, icy pavements underfoot, dark winter mornings indistinguishable from midnight, summer mornings already hazy with humidity. I learned to take small comforts and small pleasures where I could, whether it was the prospect of a half hour's reading on the bus or the realization that 6:45 a.m. today is marginally lighter than 6:45 a.m. yesterday.
Beginning in late February, one of my greatest pleasures was the return of the birds, those who migrate from the South and those who winter over but rise with the sun. A cardinal's call can cheer a frosty morning, and the skeins of Canada geese flying purposefully to outlying fields for a day's feeding, honking encouragement---or "Hurry up!"---to each other, were company: fellow commuters. One amazing summer morning I turned the corner to the bus stop in time to see a Great Blue Heron, long neck hunched between its wings and long legs trailing behind, sailing over a silent Main Street.
The geese, however, crossed my path most often, veering southwest as I headed north; they became as familiar a sight as the unknown but familiar people I passed at the same time every morning in downtown Buffalo.
One morning I noticed that one leg of the 'V' of geese was shorter than the other, while a solitary bird, honking loudly, flapped in mad pursuit several yards behind. I could hear the desperation in the call, which sounded amazingly like "Wait for me! Wait for me!"
It happened again the next morning. And the next. Always one goose lagged behind the group and strove madly to catch up. It looked like the same bird every time, although who can really distinguish between one Branta canadensis and another? I surmised---no offense intended to my gender---that the slugabed was a young, unattached female fresh out of flight school and unused to the obligations of a workaday existence. I believed I could make out a travel mug under one wing and a stylish briefcase under the other.
"Miss Lucy," I decided, was a recent graduate, cum laude, of the Royal Ontario College of Aeronautics, who had come across the border in search of greener pastures and the gander of her dreams. As most waterfowl do, Canada geese mate for life, so Miss Lucy---hoping for a long mated life---determined to find her special someone in the protected environs of East Aurora's Sinking Ponds Wildlife Refuge. So far, though, she was a small goose in a small pond and was growing desperate as the spring days lengthened. After the day's gleaning in the fields south of East Aurora was done, she took to hanging around with the unattached ganders in the parking lots of local watering-holes, cadging corn chips and trading insults with the birds who were just passing through.
Silly Miss Lucy, silly goose! You'll never find your gander that way!
At dawn the next day she would rise alone from her single nest, to find her skein taking wing without her. Late again!
I did not see Miss Lucy (or the singleton I took to be Miss Lucy) for a few days. Either she was pining in the seclusion of the reeds at Sinking Ponds OR she had decided to straighten up and fly right. In the latter case, she was a full-fledged member of the group, tardy no longer, and therefore inconspicuous among her fellows, a career goose.
That could have been what happened; I don't know.
I DO know that one morning a short time later, the geese flew over as usual, honking on their way to the fields. Trailing them by several yards were a pair of geese, silent save for the rush of air under their wings. The symmetry of their flight was breathtaking, each mirroring the form of the other effortlessly. Envision the world's greatest figure-skating pairs, and you'll get a rough idea of how the birds flowed in tandem without a sound.
I believed that morning, and I believe to this day, Miss Lucy had at long last found her mate.
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