By Shen Shixi

The Gray Couple

By Shen Shixi

At any given time,I’m typically raisingmorethanthirty geese.Most are pure white, but I have one gander,a male,and one mother goose that are gray-brown.I call them Gray Boy and Gray Girl.

The main area that the gaggle stays in is a basketball court-sized pond behind my house,and each goose family occupies their own territory according to their status among the gaggle.

For example,the left side of the pond is the more flourishing part,and is full of fish.It belongs to an old gander I named Giraffe and his wife,a mother goose I named Snow Elf.Giraffe is the king of the gaggle.Other geese would not dare swim into Giraffe’s territory. The Gray couple ranks the lowest among the gaggle.Therefore,the area they are allocated is the smallest and the worst, and the area borders that of the old Giraffe couple.It is a tiny gourd-shape bay withturbidshallowwater—fewfish would bother to go there.

During one particular mating season, when the mother geese sit on their eggs to hatch,Gray Girl had four gray babies. Home-raised geese are precocial birds, meaning the goslings can swim and search for food with their parents within a few hours of hatching.

The day the gray goslings hatched,on my way to dredge a pond blockage,I saw the Gray couple taking their babies to the gourd bay.When they were just about to jump into the water,Giraffe suddenly showed up from among the water plants and swam right in front of Gray Girl.He stretched out his flat wide beak and pecked at Gray Girl's chest aggressively,who staggered and stumbled at the sudden attack.The four babies were so scared that they hurried back to the bank.

Giraffe craned his neck onto the sky and trumpeted on and on in triumph,as if announcing a rightful claim on the bay.Afterwards,Snow Elf took her five new-borngoldenbabiesandswam around in the gourd bay.I suppose this incident occurred because Giraffe’s family was increasing and the couple was not satisfied with just the area they staked claim to previously.So they took over the tiny gourd bay when the Gray couple was hatching their babies in the shed.

The Gray couple could do nothing but cry out indignantly.Afterwards,they had to waggle along,outside the pond,with their four little gray goslings.However, as the pond was already divided,wherever they went the others chased them off.They circled the pond with the scorching sun and ended up returning tothe gourd bay in vain.

The four little gray babies,on the verge of heat stroke,were eager to plunge into the pond.Gray Girl rubbed the wing of Gray Boy with her beak, and with a series of brief and intense quacks she firmly pushed his head towardOldGiraffe,whowas guardingthe dock of the bay fromwhichthe geesecouldget into the water.

GrayGirl’s body gesture suggestedanurge for Gray Boy to fightwithGiraffe.He timidly looked up at Giraffe,whowas head and shoulders above him;he looked down at the gray goslings,who were anxious and impatient to get into the water.Then he plucked up his courage and rushed to the dock,crying loudly on the way.Giraffeimmediately gotonshoreand flapped his wings to meet him head on. Soon they were found pecking and slapping each other on the sand.

Gray Boy was by no means the match of Giraffe,neither physically nor spiritually.He was quickly defeated and left with a few of his feathers broken off, and his head bleeding from being viciously pecked.He ran away to the side ofGrayGirl, drooped his neck, crouched on the ground and shivered,utterly down and out.

To the best of my knowledge,if a gander suffers a setbackandescapes from a battle against another gander,the female will take on one of two different postures.One is to imitate the slouching gander by shrinking and drooping her head,crying sadly as a token of sharing the sorrow and disgrace of her husband.This posture is called the sympathetic posture. The other posture a female goose may adopt is to turn her head and walk away in disdain,symbolizing a disgust for staying with her unattractive husband. This posture is called the scornful pos-ture.What surprised me was that Gray Girl adopted neither of these postures. Instead,she stretched out her wings, lowered her neck to the same level as her body,and tilted up her beak.With a very graceful manner,she danced to the side of Gray Boy,flapping her wings and making joyful sounds.

Gray Girl’s body language was familiar to me,as it was a typical celebration ritual of geese.When a gander trumpets a triumph,a female goose will welcome him with this ritual.Obviously Gray Girl’s adoption of such ritual was quite irrelevant at the moment.Even Gray Boy himself was aware of that and buried his flat wide beak and head under his wings.

The four gray goslings also followed suits after their mother.They lowered their necks to the same level as their bodies,tilted up their beaks,flapped their tender wings,and danced around Gray Boy,who was then crouching on the ground.

Gray Boy pulled his head from under his wings and elongated his neck rather imposingly.A sparkling flame seemed to spark a light his hazel pupils;his closed feathers expanded bit by bit.Finally he stood up and staggered toward Giraffe again.He was much braver this time.He wrestled neck and neck with Giraffe.

Suddenly,Gray Boy promptly climbed up on the back of Giraffe and knocked the old gander’s head with the bone of his shoulder.Giraffe was knocked out by the strike and had to back down.Unguarded,he fell and splashed into the pond.Gray Boy followed hard after him by jumping into the pond as well,and trampled him under the water.

Giraffe regained his consciousness underwater;he was drowning and bitterly scared.After coming up from under the surface he paddled toward Snow Elf. However,Snow Elf turned her head away with an air of contempt and led her five golden goslings into the water plants.Giraffe had to abandon the gourd bay despondently.The Gray couple succeeded in retaking their territory.They now felt free to search food and enjoy themselves with their four gray goslings in their territory.

What Gray Girl did was totally opposed to traditional practices amongst geese.Her ritual to welcome the defeated Gray Boy awoke his self-esteem and inspired him to fight.It was quite an awesomespectacletoseeamother goose act in such a way.

(FromShen Shixi Animal Legends,Zhejiang Juvenile and Children’s Publishing House.Illustration:Li Kun.)