by Dick Snedeker
The goose was really in distress. One day in the spring of 1958 my neighbor Hugh, who lived in the house at the corner of Cranbury Road overlooking Grovers Mill Pond, came down to ask me if I could help figure out what to do about a Canada goose on the pond that was having trouble flying. He said there seemed to be something hanging from one of its feet, and it couldn’t stay airborne for very long because of the extra weight. I said, “Sure,” and went with him to see what we could do.
When we got to the pond I saw that Hugh had already put his canoe in the water, but he said he couldn’t catch the goose all by himself. He thought if we could catch the goose, we could remove the object from its foot, and it could fly again. It sounded like a good idea. But how would we catch the bird?
In those days, and up until about 1970 or so, the geese still migrated south for several months every year. They left these parts in November and did not return until March. It was always a sign that spring was approaching when we heard the geese honking away as they flew over our house first thing in the morning on the way to the pond in early March. Then sometime in the 1970s or ’80s we noticed that they were here all year round. No more migrating geese — another of the many obvious consequences of global warming, of course. But what about this goose, now that he was back north?
We got into the canoe and thought that if we could paddle out toward the center of the pond so the goose was swimming between us and the shore we might be able to force him to get up on the pond’s edge, where one of us could grab him while the other removed the object from his foot — all without injuring the bird, which we were sure might be quite fragile. And also without capsizing the canoe. But we were both pretty well experienced with a canoe, so we didn’t worry too much about that.
While neither of us had ever even touched a goose before, we realized that geese usually do not take off and fly from dry land, only from the water. Like Hugh, I had on shorts, a T-shirt, and sneakers. If anything got wet, it wouldn’t matter.
The first application of our strategy failed. As we were herding the goose toward the shore he suddenly took off, and we were afraid he was going to try flying all the way to the Millstone River, a half-mile away. But he didn’t. He suddenly turned around and landed in the water not far from us near the edge of the pond. That was our opportunity. He was tired from flying and right where we wanted him. We both paddled furiously and drove him up onto the embankment next to Cranbury Road (thankfully, there was no traffic.) As Hugh beached the canoe, I dove out into the pond and scrambled after the goose in the shallow water.
I caught him and held him down in the water while Hugh came up from behind and grabbed the object on its leg. It only took a few seconds to remove it. The object was what was known as a muskrat trap, and Hugh was able to pry it off with the help of a screwdriver he had in his pocket. As soon as it was off, I released the goose; and did he get out there fast. Wow! But when he went back to join the rest of the flock swimming on the pond about a hundred yards away, they acted as if he was no longer part of the family and they swam away from him. We watched for a while, and it took some time before he was welcomed back as part of the gang.
In those days it wasn’t unusual for farmers to try to keep undesirable animal pests away from their crops by setting traps. Muskrats, which could be up to two feet in length, lived in ponds and were considered undesirable since they sometimes ate crops such as corn. They also dug burrows in the banks of ponds, thereby causing them to give way and making it unsafe for walking near the water. From the look of this particular trap — or what was left of it — it had been there in the pond for many years. But once in a while, as in this case, a trap caught an unintended victim.
