The World Of The Canada Goose

On a grassy hilled college campus, Henry was born to two loving parents who taught him to believe in the Great Goose. Henry was always a special goose, who was brought into this world with a special purpose; but no one knew what it was to be. Henry suffered an accident that launched him into the world alone, only following what he believed to be the Great Goose’s wished. He had doubts, but he continued along unknown paths with an unknown destination or purpose. Along the way, he accumulates a strange array of colleagues, including an aging Cobbler who is a Veteran from the Korean War. He also adds a homing pigeon that is lost; hence, we have a Canada goose who does not know where he is going and a Homing Pigeon that cannot find home. Together, they proceed like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza with feathers. They add a Mallard Duck named Gilbert, two aging widowed Canada geese, Andy and Leroy, and finally, three testy Russian geese, Nicholas, Dmitri, and Natasha. The bounce around the world solving problems while learning to understand and appreciate each other.

Two Canada geese start a family.

In the fall of 1996 Sydney Plum encountered a solitary Canada goose on a pond near her home in New England. Caring for the animal became a way for her to reconnect with nature. Walks to the pond were daily rituals—reflective times during which Plum thought about the relationships between humans and animals. Mixing memoir with closely observed nature writing, Plum searches for a deeper understanding of what was changed by the experience with the solitary goose she named SG. In the tradition of Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, Plum writes lyrical lessons on the life cycle of geese, the mystery of their great migratory patterns, and their amazing adaptability. Canada geese were not always so plentiful in the United States, she explains, nor were they always denigrated as “flying carp.” Plum shows how species-management programs reestablished the birds outside their previous range at the same time as golf courses, office parks, and suburban ponds began dotting the countryside, providing them with prime habitats where they were unwanted. Memories of breaking holes in the ice for SG to escape predators turn Plum’s thoughts toward what it means to nurture. Coming to terms with how SG thinks leads Plum to examine anthropomorphism in nature writing. In contrast to the metaphors through which we commonly view nature, Plum argues that science combined with metaphor is a better way to understand animals. Though Plum’s focus is generously outward toward nature, this book also reveals an inner journey through which, as she describes it, “the enclosures of my human life had been opened. I had become more susceptible to the kindnesses of birds.”

The bestselling natural history of birds, lavishly illustrated with 600 colorphotos, is now available for the first time in flexi binding.

Puffin Chapter Books.