Have you seen them? They first arrived in America about 40 years ago. Back then, there seemed to only be a small gaggle of them and after a little while they seemed to disappear. Now, after all those years, they have flown back in and this time they’ve grown into a great gaggle of geese. They are not just any ole geese; they are what’s known as porch geese. You see these popular featured friends roosting on front porches and lawns everywhere. Now they even have a Facebook group known as The Porch Goose Club of America. And, get this, they boost of a honking huge number of 300,000 members!
Porch geese don’t have feathers, because they are not real geese. They are usually made of plastic, concrete or a synthetic material. I guess because they do not have feathers, like real geese, they have to be dressed so they don’t freeze to death in cold weather or get arrested for indecent exposure. To dress a real goose means to pluck its feather and prepare to have it for dinner…not as a guest, but the dinner.
Part of the fun of having a porch goose is to dress it according to the holiday, season or weather. For rainy weather, a goose may don a yellow rain slicker. For the Christmas season, there is a red Santa outfit. There are hats, ties, shoes and other accessories.
Long before the modern porch geese became a fad, I had one. My porch goose was a real live honking, biting, flapping but not flying, goose. Her name was Lucy. We called her Lucy Goosey. When I was growing up, I had all kinds of animals. One day, much to my surprise, Dad brought us two new ones. We had had several ducks, but they were all gone. One day I looked outside and a multicolored duck and a gray duck stood in the yard. The gray one didn’t quack like a duck; she honked like a horn. I told Dad there was something wrong with the new duck because it made the strangest quacking noise I had ever heard. Dad explained that was because she was a goose and geese don’t quack, they honk. I soon realized that our honking goose was as good as any guard dog we ever had. Any time anyone came down our drive, she sounded the sentry alarm.
Porch geese are named that because they are often placed on the front porch. Lucy Goosey longed to be a porch goose, long before the current fad came into being. Our porch seemed to be her favorite resting (or roosting) place, but she and Mama did not see eye to eye on the matter. The problem with this was that she was a real live goose, and real live geese make a real mess where they roost…if you get my drift. Mama liked Lucy Goosey, but she liked for her to roost down on our creek and not on the porch. Mama strongly encouraged Lucy to become a goose on the loose, rather than a goose on the porch. I don’t believe Mama would have ever caused any harm to any of our pets, but I do think she may have threatened to “cook Lucy’s goose” if she didn’t stay off the porch!
I begged Mama for a gander, so we could have ourselves some little goslings. I still don’t understand why she was so dead set against that. I think if our goose had been a fake porch goose, Mama might have gone along with my gander idea!
Bill King can be reached at bkpreach@yahoo.com
