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The goose nudged the radio it kept sat on the corner of its picnic blanket. It didn’t make its noise, its music, anymore. Why not? Where was its picnic ambience? The goose honked at it, spread its wings, honked again- but the radio remained uncooperative.
Frustrated, honking all the while, it stood atop the radio and stomped its little webbed feet atop it, like it’d watched the Groundskeeper do with his hands to make it do what he wanted. The buttons click-click-clicked when pressed down hard enough, but still, no sound came.
The goose stepped off of the device, feathers ruffled in displeasure. How was it supposed to enjoy its feast of a stolen sandwich and a half-peeled orange now? As it stomped around its picnic blanket, it turned, and spotted a bottle. Its bottle! The one that made its honk come out funny. Surely the amusement brought on by the bottle would cheer it up!
With the impulse control of a moth to light, the goose shoved its beak into the bottle. It raised its head toward the heavens and honked defiantly. If it did not have the music-device, then it would create its own tune for all to hear! That was simply how it would have to be!
It waddled around, food forgotten, as it honked. It honked upwards, downwards, it honked at the ladybugs and it honked at the lake. As it approached the water’s edge it decided it was thirsty and wanted a drink. Something to cleanse its palette of annoyance and trouble before it tasted the tang of an orange. It bowed its head and shook.
The bottle did not come off.
It was not the first time it got a little bit stuck. The goose flapped its wings and bonked the side of the bottle against one of the rocks by the lake. The opposite desired effect happened: The bottle pushed further up its beak. It honked again, and then again, louder, as if sheer volume would dislodge the bottle.
The bottle remained stuck.
The goose shook its head violently and flapped its wings harder, with enough force to strike the water inches from its feet. The bottle remained wedged further up its beak than it had ever been before. Striking it to the earth only got it more firmly stuck. Its breath fogged the bottle.
Lowering its wings and passively folding them as if still the most regal thing in the world, it looked at itself in the lake’s reflection. Suddenly the bottle looked (and felt) less like a grand decoration and more like a dumb item it should’ve dumped into the lake to be forgotten. The goose spread its wings and checked its feathers. Thrashing about ruffled them all up. Unacceptable! But with its beak stuck, it couldn’t preen. Even more unacceptable!
The goose huffed back to its picnic, but the sight of what it now couldn’t enjoy made its heart sink. Looking at it would do it no good, and would only serve to sadden it more, so it turned and waddled away to find something to take its mind off the disaster. What was it going to do, with a silly bottle on its face? At least its song was still beautiful. Maybe the bottle would hear it and decide to come loose if it sang loud enough.
It honked. It honked loudly! So loudly the glass shook around its beak and that was a decidedly uncomfortable sensation, so it stopped and resumed being miserable.
A click and creak of rusted hinges got its attention. It turned to see the Groundskeeper open his gate and step out, hand held over his eyes as he looked around. Why didn’t he wear his sunhat? The goose made a note to make him wear it later, if the sun was bothering him so much.
The Groundskeeper spotted the goose, to which the goose spread its wings and honked. The urge to be a pest overtook any other thoughts in its head and it waddled toward him, wings spread in an attempt to look as big and scary and cool as it could be. It honked once more.
For a long minute, the Groundskeeper backed away as the goose approached, before he crossed the threshold into his garden and nudged the goose out with his boot. Oh, jail for the gardener! Jail for one thousand years for kicking the goose like a soccer ball!
But before it could enact its revenge, he shut the gate in its face. Rude! It heard the signature click of the gate being locked. The goose beat its wings against the gate in agitation. How dare he lock it out! It was its duty to disturb him and eat his cabbage!
The goose honked once more, in hopes of the Groundskeeper opening the gate just enough for it to slip by. But no such luck came. Its one chance, gone with the wind.
The goose didn’t feel good. Without anything fun or mischievous or both to distract it, its hunger returned. It really wanted the orange. Or the Groundskeeper’s cabbage! And it really wanted a drink from the lake, now, too…
Head bowed, feeling awfully small and helpless, it trudged back to the lake. Again, it bonked the bottle against the rock.
After a few minutes, it decided being mopey sucked, and it was worth another shot of getting into the garden to do something fun. So it returned to the gate and honked loudly over and over and over. But the Groundskeeper had wisened up. And… truth be told, for once it didn’t feel like putting much effort into things. Breathing felt funny in the bottle and it was getting quite uncomfortable.
The water around it felt taunting, mocking it for being unable to taste it. Picnic abandoned, it swam across the cool water back to its beloved path and bell-hole. There, in one of the bushes nearby, was its nest, where it could nap its worries away. If making trouble for humans didn’t cheer it up, then some rest surely would.
It nosed its way into its bountiful nest of soft stolen things, like blankets and a jacket, and settled in. It rested its head on its edge, although awkwardly, given its predicament.
The goose slept.
Morning came. The goose didn’t recall waking up to watch the sunset.
It didn’t need all that much sleep, but it was oh-so-terribly bored and hungry that it spent the whole night and early morning hours moping about and prodding its bells to hear their song. It was just so hard to have fun when its belly growled and it couldn’t pick things up. The only reason it returned to the lake was because it knew it was around the time the Groundskeeper came out, and maybe it could have some fun with bugging him somehow.
The hunger was worse, now. It tiredly thumped its wings against the gate and honked.
Like clockwork, it took some loud honking to get the Groundskeeper to open his gate. The trick only worked once or twice a day, so it was primed and ready. The goose tried to squirm in to disrupt the peace, furiously wiggling its body even as it got stuck between the gate and the groundskeeper’s leg.
Exerting itself made it difficult to breathe. When did that happen? The bottle was all fogged up from its breathing. The groundskeeper shouted when the goose finally wormed its way in, beating its wings and singing in victory.
Finally!
…now what?
Without its beak, what was it to do? How was it to munch the carrot tops? The goose heard the gate shut again. The Groundskeeper spoke more, and the goose turned to see what his next chore was. Maybe planting something new? Or harvesting his crops? It wouldn’t mind disturbing all that-!
But the Groundskeeper looked straight at the goose. It wasn’t the annoyance or passing glance he gave it every other time. It reminded the goose of the TV store owner’s expression when she went to retrieve the boy from the phone booth. The goose had never seen that expression directed at itself.
The human took a step toward it and suddenly the goose felt like it needed to leave right away.
Turning, flapping its wings, it tried to gain air but failed and crashed into the dense bushes in the garden. As fast as it could, it fled right through, forgoing the gate entirely to go through its personal little goose-hole the Groundskeeper never fixed for whatever reason. Only a bag of soil stood between itself and freedom.
Itchy gloves locked around the goose’s sides.
The Groundskeeper had never touched it before! It made an alien panic rise in the goose, one it’d never felt before and still it couldn’t breathe, and became frighteningly dizzy as it desperately tried to fit between the small space it made between the soil-bag and the hole in the hedges. As long as it got out, it’d be fine, it’d be free-!
The goose did not honk. The goose hissed and made noises it forgot it could make, thrashing furiously to escape the manhandling. The Groundskeeper pulled it out of its escape, speaking all the while as he dragged it off of the tilled soil and onto cobbled path and grass. The human spoke very softly although the goose had never felt more panicked in its life, hating, loathing every bit of contact between them.
The Groundskeeper held its head with one hand and the goose hissed louder, hissed so loud its vision spotted and wetness left its beak and pooled in the bottle and it was gross and a horrible physical sensation and what was the point? The hissing, the writhing and beating of its wings didn’t deter the human from grabbing it and talking at it in tongue it couldn’t understand. And it was so tired, and even though it'd slept for so long, it really didn't have the strength to beat its wings so strongly anymore.
The human gripped the bottle and yanked it off in one smooth motion. Just as quickly, he released the goose and leapt back, bottle in hand.
The goose breathed cleanly for the first time in hours. It just stood there, too stupefied to move. What just happened?
It took a minute for it to fully process the Groundskeeper helped it, in the most unhelpful way imaginable. Now it smelled like smelly human, and its feathers were all ruffled and covered from dirt from the Groundskeeper’s gloves and it was certainly an unsightly view after the past day!
The goose lifted one wing and began furiously preening to fix itself up and make itself presentable once more. The Groundskeeper moved in its peripherals, which made it immediately freeze and stop its grooming to watch. He opened his shed and placed the bottle inside very quickly, in a place high up not easily accessible. From what little the goose glimpsed, anyway. It’d never been in the shed before. That was for another day.
Once deciding the Groundskeeper wasn’t about to snatch it again, it resumed straightening up feathers and shaking off flakes of dirt.
A new noise alerted the goose, who was beginning to realize it was quite easily distracted by new noises. The Groundskeeper took his watering can and filled a jar with it. He placed the jar down not too far away.
The goose examined the offering with great suspicion. It had always simply taken whatever it pleased. To be given something was… disquieting. But it was very thirsty and did not feel like moving its tired feet all the way to the lake, so it accepted it and drank. This water tasted different from the lake water, but not in a bad way.
When the goose drank its fill and kicked over the empty jar (much too wide for it to fit its beak into), it noticed a large, fresh cabbage leaf sitting beside it that certainly wasn’t there before. It bowed its head and got a satisfying crunch from that. Not the most filling thing in the world, but after so long of not eating, it was welcome!
Hunger staved off although not satiated, it decided to find something more filling. Eating the water-grass and plucking insects from the lakeside were tempting options. Perhaps it could find a new orange.
The goose looked over at the Groundskeeper, who’d knelt by one of his plants to pull up the few weeds sprouting among them. It lowered its head and locked onto his key ring. Walking very, very slowly, body held completely horizontally, it crept toward him.
The familiar weight of the keys made a satisfying jingle in its beak. Oh, joyous of joys, how it missed grabbing things!
The Groundskeeper jolted and turned, but the goose was already running off, fueled by a new day of potential mischief. It had to catch up, after all! And it needed to restore its pride after getting grabbed. Crimes such as manhandling would not be forgiven! But the goose was grateful, just a little bit, because now it could resume its duties of being a small menace, so it decided to spare the Groundskeeper from its fun for the time being.
It dove through the gap leading into its goose-tunnel and escaped flawlessly. Honking in jubilation, it waddled home-free. It dropped the Groundskeeper’s keys at the lakeside bench and went to find something nice to eat. And then it could preen.
And then it could inconvenience people all day once more.