Having the Prime of My Life

LIFE MUSINGS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF FIFTY

There’s a lake near my the apartment building where I used to live in Jacksonville, Florida. On nights when I was tired or needed to clear my head, which at my age is nearly every night, I sometimes would take a walk around it. I never liked birds but I found these birds on Kendall Lake particularly interesting.

Especially the long-necked geese. They’re larger than the Canada geese that flew over the lake near my home in Northern New York. These larger, longer-necked geese stay year around. 

One night while I strolled the lake’s perimeter, I saw a sea of brown and black taking up nearly one-fourth of the bank on the other side of the lake. As I got closer, there must have been a hundred of or more of those long-necked geese. 

I had seen them on the golf course but never before in such big numbers.

It had rained quite a bit and I supposed the grass surrounding the lake was a hot spot for worms or grubs or whatever geese eat. They sure poop enough. The sidewalk was covered with the evidence of their existence.

Then as mysteriously as they came, they left.

Probably to literally find greener pastures. I figured they’d pecked the land clean of grubs and went hunting to find more.

Then the next night, there they were again. Not as many but pecking away, content in their meanderings. Once in a while, one of them would catch a grub and another greedy mate would chase him away and steal it.

I suppose greed and trying to take something we didn’t earn for ourselves isn’t limited to geese or other animals.

Greed is as old as Cain and Abel and I suspect will be around as long as the earth endures.