Andrew Vladeck

The Ranger & The Goose

[Friends, since I’m working behind the scenes as of late, please allow me to tell you a story.   I was out recently with a few friends and was recounting this tale about a pickle I found myself in during a similarly frigid winter.   I was a NYC Urban Park Ranger a ways back.  An interesting gig…]

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It was an unusually mild and bright day for January.  Central Park was filled with New Yorkers and tourists ambling around the meandering pathways.  Most of the birds had migrated south months ago –except for one stubborn old goose.  That goose was now sitting in the middle of the lightly frozen pond in front of Belvedere Castle.  The goose seemed content, and to be enjoying the day as much as everyone else.  It looked around, took in the beautiful day, and quietly honked at the passersby.

A middle-aged woman from the Upper East Side approached my partner and me when our routine patrol took us to the Great Lawn.  She pointed at the goose sitting happily in the middle of the pond and, as she buttoned up her fur coat, moaned that the poor creature was stuck and was going to die.  She swore that it had its webbed feet tangled in fishing wire, which no one could see, and surely there must be something we useless civil servants could do.  I tried to explain, as one would to a five-year old, how nature takes its course: sometimes old birds can’t make the journey home, and sometimes that’s sad. She was not having it.  Unfortunately, my sergeant wasn’t having it either. He was so afraid that a park patron would a complaint that he made us go to terrific lengths to appease them. Sergeant Pillbug, as the rangers called him, was our cripplingly awkward supervisor. He lived in his mother’s basement in Queens and because of this had the ghastly complexion of a terrestrial crustacean. It suited him. He had the “can do” idea to go to the boat house, wedge a large grey rowboat into the back of our little green jeep, and carry it to the pond for to save the goose. But the pond was frozen, and the goose was really, really big.

With a resounding series of cracks, the aluminum rowboat broke through the ice.  The sound reverberated off its metal hull, echoing across the Great Lawn, beckoning the teeming masses to come see what curious thing the rangers in their funny hats were doing.  Within seconds I found myself rowing through the thin ice, my starched sergeant sitting awkwardly erect at the rear of the dinghy, holding a walkie-talkie to his ear.  With each stroke the oars chiseled through the surface and our little boat groaned along, raising a ruckus like a giant icebreaker.  The goose was watching us curiously from the middle of the pond as we clumsily approached amidst this enormous racket.  By this point hundreds of spectators ringed the banks of Turtle Pond, underneath Belvedere Castle, and on top of the lookout on the castle itself, as the sun glistened off the ice and water and the diamond earrings of the fur-coated patron who had sent us on this expedition to Save the Poor Bird.

Just as we got within five feet of the goose, in the absolute center of the little pond, just as I was thinking to myself, “Now what?  And how exactly does Sergeant Pillbug envision me arresting/rescuing this enormous, honking Christmas dinner,” the goose popped up to its webbed feet and made a mad waddle across the ice, up the embankment, and disappeared into the woods.  For a minute, all was silent.  Silent as only a cold, clear winter’s day can be.  There was no wind, and there were no leaves to rustle in the barren trees.  The flags dangled motionless from the turret overhead.  And then, as if someone was opening a giant tin can, a peal of laughter slowly escaped—then erupted—followed by cheers, more laughter, and the muffled sound of hundreds of gloved hands applauding our tour-de-farce.  We dopey rangers were on stage.  A thinly frozen stage.  And we needed help.

Andrew


Postscript – Two weeks later a goose was found in the woods frozen as hard as a turkey on Thanksgiving eve.  My sergeant transferred to the communications division, working in a windowless bunker.  I transferred to The Bronx… far from the fur-coated animal lover of the Upper East Side.

Posted on 02/07/11 at 01:29AM | Filed under: blog | 1 Comments