Getting Goosed

Have you ever heard the sound of a million geese in flight? It's a good deal more terrifying than you might think.

I was out running this morning when, in the distance, I heard a jumbo jet crashing into an all-drum concert held inside a steel foundry. At least that's what it sounded like. There was a tremendous roaring noise that went on and on and on, never stopping, only getting louder.

Geez, I think to myself, have they finally done the sensible thing and nuked Trenton? When I got to a break in the trees I looked for a mushroom cloud on the horizon. No suck luck--but what I saw was even more frightening. Geese. Nothing but geese. A galaxy of geese, stretched across the entire horizon.

Now, I have a deep love for geese. On my wall hangs a poster with the inexplicable message "Who Cares About the Geese? Everyone!" But a million of anything is frightening. A million dust mites would be frightening. And a million geese is downright spine-chilling.

I went back to my run, but I now carried within me an icy sliver of fear. All those geese...what if they chose to turn against us? What if they descended on our airports en masse, crashing planes and grounding flights? The lesson: beware of geese. You never know what they might be plotting.