As is usually the case with matters such as these, it all started innocently enough.
The geese gorged themselves in typical fashion. Gaggles of the majestic Canadian birds, whether grazing the banks of the Fraser River or munching the ancient Viking bunkers on the shores of Newfoundland, and all spots in between, gather upon the grasses , honking and hooting their good fortune, chasing around their young ones. And they feed and feed. And once they’ve had their fill, with a wave of their powerful wings, they magically take to the sky.
Now surely the geese are completely unaware of any of man's invisible, historically determined borders, and must be guided solely by instinct - that ingrained, conditioned behaviour honed over eons, perfected by survival. So they fly for some time, towards warmer pastures. That’s just natural. The long flights, however, do tend to wear them down, especially considering the massive amounts of vegetation they’ve consumed, and the large clumps of grass collected within them begins to feel lumpy as it gets pushed through the systems of these hard-working birds. And so understandably, when good and ready, they plop their former food out, and it bombs down near Bellingham, Washington or Detroit, the Motor City.
Relieved, they themselves glide down toward the Earth, empty and therefore hungry once again, and search for grass. But the grass is diesely and unkempt in Flint. And it is sparse in between warehouses and parking lots in Bellingham. And so where the grass appears greener, they fly. And it takes them back to Canada.
And so there they graze and after having reached capacity, they take off again to jettison their intestinal cargo, and unknowingly heave it upon hapless American soil. They circle back and this becomes the custom.
It had all gone unnoticed. And really, perhaps it should have stayed that way. But one morning, a tollbooth border guard at the Alberta/Montana line, briefly coaxed away from his box of powdered donuts by a beaver trying to cross into the states with some softwood lumber, by chance witnessed the strange flight patterns of the Canadian goose. He watched as a flock of the prodigious poopers picked up near the banks of a small foothills river and proceeded to cross the international – and in his mind, the figurative –line and dump goose doo doo down upon his native Montana soil.
The border guard immediately licked the dry white sugar from his stubby right forefinger to speed dial Homeland Security, which declared what is called a Code Red, which sent two black vans, teams of black suited men and a couple large choppers to protect their interests and monitor the situation. A team of tediously trained Navy Seals, descending from the helicopters, saw the geese violate America, confirming with their own eyes what the border guard had seen.
Think tanks were quickly filled. Armed patrolmen, camouflaged in greens, equipped with binoculars and infrared goggles, some dressed as bushes, were sent out to stalk any Canadian goose found within 50 miles of the United States. The celebrated Gulf War Hero General Fox declared in of his planned operation; “Where there is a goose, I want a gander.” Plans to erect a 900 foot high wall along the 49th parallel were seriously discussed. 24/7 closed circuit cameras, surveillance systems detecting precise goose honking frequencies, went up and the newest and most elaborate radar was used to monitor all geese flight patterns.
To Homeland Security, protecting the American people from the potential dangers of fast falling objects from the sky was a concern, yet it was not considered to be the most important reason to pay so much attention to the geese. In the torrent of confidential memos streaming through Washington – some of which have recently been released – it is clear that this issue had a more profound and symbolic importance: they had to show the world that no one could get away with shitting on the United States.
Bills went through with wartime efficiency, getting bipartisan support, to allocate funds towards this worthy fight against the dirty flight.
When a goose in Quebec innocently waddled up to a bush clad patrolman and started to nibble the plastic garnish adorning him, the agent broke out his best goosetalk - which came from the most decorated and distinguished linguists of the land, who had been tasked with deciphering and devising, through their constant surveillance, a manner of speaking to geese - to flip the goose and get it to rat out its comrades. The attempt proved futile, as the goose could not hear the patrolman over the cloud of confused obscenities it honked out over the displeasing taste of the plastic bush.
Despite all the brazen geese pooping and blatant disregard of American sovereignty, the American government’s tries to stop the geese were fruitless. Politicians influenced the media to unleash a public smear campaign against the feathered defecators, but were unable to illicit within the general populace any of the warm feeling of rage they had in past endeavours. People could not be made afraid of the birds. And if the American people did not fear the geese, their government couldn’t declare war against them.
Polls in independent media outlets actually showed that Americans, in general, really did not care about the defacement. They joked about it. This only incensed those in charge.
In America, it was illegal to hunt these animals and no citizen would stand idly by if the government had tried to enact a law to make this possible. These animals, honking and crapping aside, are kind of pretty. And only a cold-blooded compassionless cruelheart could support it’s country murdering a pretty animal.
So it was with all think tanks ready to burst in frustration, that finally an idea was born so diabolical and meticulous that it could not fail and, even better, its undertaking would go unnoticed to all but the keenest observers.
The psychological battle was unleashed.
The operation was brought up only on a need to know basis. It was decided any goose caught crossing the border would be tagged with a miniature tracking device, drugged and brought to a secret detention centre to undergo an intensive, nerve-wracking, rewiring process deep within a military base, half a mile underground.
And so it was, as each Canadian goose crossed the 49th parallel, with their bellies full, they were hit with a dart and fell to the ground. Gaggles were gathered by loaders and shovelled into the backs of trucks.
However, this technique proved time consuming. As more was learned about the geese, new processes were implemented to improve efficiency: an ether-like spray, altered to smell like wet herbs to attract flocks, was found to be quite useful in slowing the birds down to where they would become drowsy, land and then fall asleep, and then become prone to capture. Hercules aircraft, adorned in goose feathers, engineered to emit a goose call, would sneak up on flocks of geese in the air, and when they crossed the border, the Herc would overtake them, gas them and suck them into its hold. On the ground, the Air Force men would walk into the base with limp, knocked out geese slung over their backs, carrying them by the necks, like grim clowns with bouquets of dead balloons.
Within 4 months, the Canadian geese had all undergone their annual migration out of chilly Canada for the winter months. Only a few people on the continent knew that the Canadian geese would never return.
These geese were not killed. They had not been destroyed, but instead altered. For several months the geese underwent an intense assimilation procedure where they were force fed propaganda in twangy accents. Their eyelids were taped open and the geese were shown hours of looped footage, Hollywood stars and striped flags flapping over majestic landscapes and massive industrial projects over reworked Earth and obese, pathos-sweaty desk pounding pundits punding persuasively on the evils of everywhere else and dollars falling from the sky. The geese were stuffed with commissary. Stuffed more than they would have allowed. They were prohibited from flying. They were separated, grouped together in competing factions where some were given too much to eat and other were given nothing.
Finally, when they were commissioned to leave the base, the geese were wholly different. The campaign had been a total success. The geese were larger. They were louder. They were more frightened.
And when they flew North, the Canadian people noticed a change in the geese. They saw that they pooped everywhere and anywhere they pleased. They fought like dogs. They started to eat their own poop, instead of treating it like it didn’t stink.
They weren’t Canadian geese anymore.
They were now American Geese.
1 comment:
Post a Comment