Death Takes a Gander (22 page)

C
ANADA
G
OOSE

Branta canadensis

Family: Anatidae

APPEARANCE
: A very large bird with grayish-brown plumage, a long black neck, and a black head with a white chinstrap. There are six species of Canada goose, each one varying slightly in size.

RANGE
: Once known mainly as a wilderness bird, the Canada goose, or “honker” as it’s sometimes called, is adapting to life on golf courses and in urban parks, expanding its year-round range. Northern flocks still migrate from Alaska, Canada, and the Arctic to northern Mexico.

HABITAT
: Canada geese can be found at reservoirs, lakes, ponds, marshes, wet meadows, golf courses, urban and suburban parks, and in open spaces.

VOICE
: Its voice varies from species to species, from a deep musical honking in the larger birds to a high cackling or gabbling in the smaller birds. Few can resist the haunting sound of Canada geese honking and calling as they fly in
V
formation overhead.

BEHAVIORS
: The Canada goose forms a long-term bond with its mate and produces young usually in its third year. Spring and early summer find the goose family swimming together on lakes and pond. The gander usually leads, while the young, fluffy, yellow-and-black babies trail behind.

CONSERVATION
: The goose feeds on shoots, roots, seeds of grass and sedges, bulbs, grain, berries, insects, crustaceans, and mollusks. Most grain consumption is post-harvest. Danger comes in the form of genetically engineered crops and hunting. More recently, the semi-domesticated goose found on golf courses and in urban and suburban parks faces increased predation by man.

As one of Wisconsin’s
largest wildlife rehabilitation facilities, Fellow Mortals, Inc., has been serving the state-line communities in and around Lake Geneva, WI since 1985. Founded on the belief that a compassionate act on behalf of another living creature is one of the noblest deeds that can be performed by a human, Fellow Mortals admits approximately fifteen hundred wild birds and mammals every year, returning sixty percent of them back to the wild—a percentage significantly higher than the national average.

On January 17, 1992, Fellow Mortals received a call from a woman walking her dog at the edge of Lake Geneva who had discovered a lead-poisoned Canada goose. It was the first of hundreds of geese found on the ice, and the worst lead-poisoning case in southeastern Wisconsin’s history. But through a cooperative effort with Fellow Mortals, the Department of Natural Resources, other wildlife rehabilitators, an army of volunteers, and the generosity of a major pharmaceutical company, there were survivors. And the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service pinpointed the cause—the contamination of wetland area miles to the north. Their investigation fixed the blame on a skeet-shooting ranch owned by a major U.S. corporation that was eventually forced to rehabilitate the wetlands.
Death Takes a Gander
is based on this case, though I’ve moved the location and taken great license with the story.

Rehabilitation of animals is a costly endeavor. The costs involved in the case of the lead-poisoned geese—thousands—nearly bankrupted Fellow Mortals. It was only through people’s generosity and donations that they were able to recover. If you would like to donate to their organization, please visit their website at
www.fellowmortals.org
, or donate to a rehabilitation facility near you. Your gift to a wildlife rehabilitation facility is tax deductible, and your donation saves lives. Better yet, volunteer. In the words of Yvonne Wallace Blane, in the case of the lead-poisoned geese “the cost of lives saved cannot be told in dollar amounts alone, for they were also paid for by the people with disparate interests who invested their time and emotion in a seemingly hopeless cause for one reason—belief in the value of individual life.”

Chris Goff is the
award-winning author of five environmental novels. The bestselling Birdwatcher’s Mystery series was nominated for two WILLA Literary Awards, a Colorado Author’s League Award, and published in the UK and Japan. The sixth installment in the series, A PARLIAMENT OF OWLS, will be launching in September 2015.

Several people helped me
by providing technical information for this story. My deepest thanks to: Special Agent Linda Schroeder of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who lived a real-life version of this story and shared her insider information; Scott Roederer and Gary Matthews, two birders who put their heads together to dig up obscure facts on the migrating patterns of geese; Yvonne Wallace Blane of Fellow Mortals, a wildlife rehab center in Wisconsin, who provided videotapes of an actual geese rescue operation; National Wildlife Rehabilitators Association and Tri-State Bird Rescue and Research, who filled in the blanks; and John from Johnson’s Sporting Goods, Inc. in Rockland, ME, who gave me a hands-on lesson on the different types of shot.

Additional thanks goes to my fellow writers and friends. To my RMFW buddies, you know who you are; to the members of my critique group, with a special thanks to Suzanne Proulx for the brainstorming and Gwen Schuster-Haynes for the plotting help; to Elisabeth Husseini, for coming up with such a wonderful title; and to my dear friend, Laura Ware, who helped me find my way to the end.

Finally, I would like Peter Rubie, my favorite agent, for never losing faith; my family, whose confidence in me kept me going through the toughest of years; and especially my new publisher, Astor + Blue Editions, who is committed to keeping the stories of the EPOCH (Elk Park Ornithological Chapter) members circulating. I can think of no better partners than A + B and my new editor, Jillian Ports, to help me navigate the new waters of today’s publishing world.

Read all of the
Birdwatcher’s Mystery
Series by Christine Goff, published by Astor + Blue Editions:

*A Rant of Ravens

*Death of a Songbird

*A Nest in the Ashes

*Death Takes a Gander

*A Sacrifice of Buntings

www.astorandblue.com