By Shen Shixi

The Gray Couple

By Shen Shixi

I raise more than thirty geese, mostly are purely white,with only one gander and one mother goose being gray brown.I call them Gray Boy and Gray Girl.

The main region the gaggle stay is a basketball court size pond behind my house,and each goose family occupy their own territory according to their status among the gaggle.

For example,the left side of the pond is the most flourishing part and is full of fish.It belongs to old gander Giraffe and his wife,mother goose Snow Elf.Giraffe is the king of the gaggle.Other geese would not dare swim to their territory if they stay there.The Gray couple ranks the lowest among the gaggle.Therefore the water region they are allocated is the smallest and the worst,which right borders that of the old Giraffe couple. It is a tiny gourd-shape bay with turbid shallow water and few fishes would bother to go there.

In the right season when mother geese sit on eggs to hatch,Gary Girl gotfourgrayhairybabies. Home-raised geese are precocial birds. Goslings can swim after their parents to search for food few hours after they are hatched.

That day on my way to a ditch by the pond to dredge its blockage,I saw the Gary 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 to the front of Gray Girl.He stretched out his flat wide beak and pecked at Gray Girl's chest hardly,who staggered andstumbled 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 newly-born golden babies and swam around in the gourd bay jauntily.I guess this incident occurred because the Giraffe’s family members were increasing and the couple was notsatisfiedwiththeregionthey owned 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 cried out indignantly.Afterwards, they had to waggle along the pond with their four little gray goslings. However,as the pond had already been divided,wherever they went, they were expelled by others.They circled the pond with the scorching sun and just ended up returning to the gourd bay in vain.

The four little gray babies,almost sunstroke,weresoclamorousto 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 toward Old Giraffe,who was guarding the dock of the bay from which geese could get into the water.

Gray Girl’s body gesture suggested an urge for Gray Boy to fight with Giraffe.He timidly looked up at Giraffe, who was 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. Giraffe immediately got on shore and 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 either physically or spiritually.Only two battle rounds later he was defeated,a few of his feathers being broken off and the sarcoid onhiscombbleedingafterbeing pecked.He ran away to the side of Gray Girl,drooped his neck,crouched on the ground and shivered,utterly down and out.

To the best of my knowledge,if a gander suffers a setback and escapes from a battle against another gander, there will be two different postures on the part of a female goose.One is to imitate the slouching gander by shrinking the feather and drooping the head,crying sadly as a token of sharing the sorrow and disgrace of her husband. This posture is called sympathetic posture.The other posture a female goose may adopt is to turn around her head and walk away in disdain,symbolizing a disgust of staying together with her nasty husband.This posture is called scornful posture.What surprised me was that Gray Girl adopted neither of the postures.Instead,she stretched out her wings,lowered her neck to the same level as herbody,and tiltedupher beak.With very gracefulmanner she danced to the side of Gray Boy, flappingher wings with happy sound.

GrayGirl’s bodylanguage wasfamiliarto 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 just 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 the wings and erected it up imposingly.There raised sparkling flameagainin hisnut-brown pupils;his closedfeather expanded bit by bit.Finallyhe stoodupand staggeredtoward Giraffe again.Hewas much braver this time.He wrestledneckand neck with Giraffe.

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

Giraffe was choked by the water and bitterly scared.After coming up from under the water he paddled toward Snow Elf.The latter,however, turned away her head with an air of contemptand ledherfivegolden goslings into the water plants.Giraffe had to forsake the gourd bay despondently.The Gray couple succeeded in retaking their gourd bay.They felt free to search food and enjoy themselves with their four gray goslings in their territory.

What Gray Girl did was totally dif ferent from the traditional practice. Her ritual to welcome defeated Gray Boy awoke his self-esteem and inspired him to fight.It was awesome for a mother goose to act like that.

(FromShen Shixi Animal Legends, ZhejiangJuvenileandChindren’s Publishing House.Illustration:Li Kun, Archibald Thorburn)