The Marching Goose
- Lynn Brooke
- Sep 26, 2023
- 3 min read
Alone Goose was in a field about a half-mile from my house. I spotted it as I was going to the store. I knew it was Alone Goose because it was alone in the middle of the field. There were no other geese in sight or any other animals.
Yesterday, I heard honking in the lot next to my house. I didn’t pay much attention until it registered that this was an unusual honking. This was not the usual sounds geese use to communicate.
I went to investigate.
HONK step step, HONK step step, HONK step step, HONK step step.
It was like a metronome set on slow, loud, repetitive and in the same cadence.
HONK step step, HONK step step, HONK step step, HONK step step.
It was Alone Goose.
I raced out. I had no idea why. I guess I wanted to communicate with Alone Goose. My neighbor friend says I have to get a life. I had no idea what I would say to the goose or how I was going to communicate.
HONK step step, HONK, step step, HONK step step, HONK step step.
Alone Goose was marching. Around the end of the lot, down the road, then turn right at the next intersection. I could not keep up. It went on down the road and I lost sight.
HONK step step, HONK step step, HONK step step, HONK step step.
All of the geese are gone. They flew away weeks ago, probably to the cornfield 15 or 20 miles away.
Alone Goose is alone.
Geese are family oriented. They are diligent with the care of their own kind. They mate for life. Alone Goose, however, has been persistently excluded from any families or groups.
HONK step step, HONK step step, HONK step step, HONK step step.
I have no idea the consequences of isolation for a goose. The effects on people are well-known. Those effects have been extensively studied and documented.
A while back, and this was quite a while back, babies in the Soviet Union and other countries who came up for adoption had devastating outcomes. They could not be socialized. They were returned, like unwanted chicks at Easter. They had been placed in bassinets after being born, never touched and left alone.
Lessons were learned the hard way. Now, medical orders demand babies in intensive care and neonatal intensive care are to be touched and stroked at regular intervals. Premature babies, even 3 pounds and less, have to be stroked. Nurses, mothers and volunteers perform this mandatory task to promote physical and emotional development.
Information from the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine reported that
Social isolation significantly increased a person’s risk of premature death from all causes, a risk that may rival those of smoking, obesity and physical inactivity.
Social isolation was associated with about a 50% increased risk of Dementia.
Poor social relationships (characterized by social isolation or loneliness) was associated with a 29% increased risk of heart disease and a 32% increased risk of stroke.
Loneliness was associated with higher rates of depression, anxiety and suicide.
Loneliness among heart failure patients was associated with a nearly 4 times increased risk of death, 68% increased risk of hospitalization and 57% increased risk of emergency department visits.
People not only need social contact, we deteriorate without it.
There have been no studies, to my knowledge, about how loneliness affects a goose. (There have been some involving monkeys).
HONK step step, HONK step step, HONK step step, HONK step step.
Alone Goose has progressed from that gosling, paddling like crazy to find family and the ensuing rejection, to this mature-sized goose, honking its loneliness and traveling for miles on foot to find someone, anyone.
I couldn’t keep up yesterday to tell Alone Goose: What? You will be OK? You will find a family?
HONK step step, HONK step step, HONK step step, HONK step step.
Alone Goose kept marching down the road, out-of-sight.
Will it succumb to exhaustion or perish from loneliness with a broken heart?
We can’t let that happen with our humans.
Let me know how you are doing. I care.
Sincerely,
Lynn Brooke
P.S. Reflection: Find and visit those who are alone.
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Photo Credit: © 2023 Rachel Gareau
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