"The Geese on Avenida Las Palmas" a Short Story by Jonathan Hoffman

I had a love-hate relationship with the gaggle of geese that occupied Avenida Las Palmas in Rancho Mirage, California during the fall of 2020. At the height of the coronavirus pandemic, I wasn’t able to return to the University of Redlands for the fall semester of my junior year because the campus was closed due to pandemic related health concerns.

After spending a long lockdown summer at my childhood home in Calabasas, I itched to go somewhere, anywhere where I could feel something else but the stagnation I felt in Calabasas.

Luckily, my grandparents let me spend the semester at their house in Rancho Mirage since they would mostly stay quarantining at their house in Beverly Hills until pandemic conditions improved.

So, on September 1 I moved out of my parents’ house and moved to the desert. I arrived at my grandparents’ house that afternoon and when I went out to go shopping, it wasn’t just hot, it was blazing outside. There is something uniquely intense about the late summer heat in the desert cities of southern California. From late August to early October, there really aren’t any cool or comfortable days in Rancho Mirage. The cool days are hot and tend to have temperatures in the 90s or low 100s. On the hot days, when the temperature would soar to the 110s and sometimes pierce the 120s, it felt like the sun was a neighbor with no regard for personal space, making sure to check up on me all the time and lingering around way after it overstayed its welcome. On the few occasions during that first month in the desert, when I needed to walk a couple hundred feet to get to my car to drive somewhere, the sun would enthusiastically greet me with its burning yellow-orange gaze, and I would start sweating buckets.

One night during that first week, I found myself awake at 2:00 a.m. and decided to check what the outside temperature was at that time. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that my weather app said it was 101 degrees Fahrenheit in the dead of night! That first month in the desert, I spent most of my time inside, shielded by the powerful air conditioning that protected me from the heat of the sun. I have never been more thankful for a piece of modern technology than I was for my grandparents’ A/C that fall.

Although I spent most of time inside during that first month, I could still hear some sounds from the outside world. I would hear cars drive by on occasion, I would hear planes soaring overheard, and very faintly I could hear the honking of geese. On those rare occasions I drove my car to the grocery store or to the dump to drop off trash, to my shock and awe, I would pass by some geese who were relaxing on the golf course in the community. It seemed like every time I drove past the gaggle during that month, more and more geese would appear. I was amazed to see these beautiful brown, black, and white feathered birds relaxing in the harsh desert heat. It wasn’t until early October, when the sun stopped ceaselessly harassing me with its intense heat, that I was able to walk around the community. It was then when I learned why those geese could withstand those hellish conditions, those animals were hell spawn themselves.

From a distance or when driving past them in a car, those geese seem peaceful—docile even—the tens of geese seemed content to graze on the golf course grass and occasionally give a friendly honk or two at each other. However, when I walked around the neighborhood many times during the course of the fall semester, I started noticing that those fowl were truly foul.

I noticed while walking one day in the middle of October, that scattered all across the black asphalt on the street were little white and green dots. Upon further inspection of those dots, I came to a gross realization that littered all across Avenida Las Palmas, the main street in my grandparents’ community, the geese had marked the asphalt with their poop. I didn’t think too much of it at the time. They were just birds and even though it was all over the street, it wasn’t like the birds purposefully pooped on a place where people would walk or drive, right?

As the size of the gaggle of geese increased and as more of the surface area of the street became littered with their droppings, I came to another realization, there was hardly any goose poop in the grass where they were grazing and honking. Those majestic looking birds walked into the middle of the road or on the sidewalk purposefully to do their business. No, this wasn’t just some wild theory I made up to explain the difference in the number of droppings between the street and the grass. I saw geese walk into the street, poop, and waddle back to their friends.

When I was young and my family would spend thanksgiving in Rancho Mirage with my grandparents, my grandmother and I used to go down by the water on the golf course and watch the small community of ducks swim there. Those beautiful mallard ducks would swim in the water, waddle around the lip of the pond, and quack at each other on those November afternoons. I loved watching the male mallards, with their beautiful green heads, yellow beaks, and orange feet sparkle after they emerged from underneath the water to waddle on to the shore.

Unfortunately, as the gaggle of geese grew larger and larger that fall, they displaced the ducks to a solitary corner of the pond. If one duck or a group of ducks got too close to the geese’s newly claimed territory on the pond, the geese would honk violently and flap their wings to scare, intimidate, and ultimately bully the poor little ducks. It was sad to see the geese bully fellow fowl, but they simply outnumbered and outsized the mallards, so there was nothing anyone could do.

Those ducks weren’t the only group of animals that the geese felt superior over, they also felt as if humans were bellow them as well. I walked around the neighborhood and would see the geese honk at old ladies slowly driving past them in their golf carts. At first I thought this was pretty funny, thinking to myself that it was karma for the ladies not wearing masks during a pandemic. However, those geese could be pretty aggressive, occasionally charging golfers just trying to play through the hole they found themselves at. Not only did the golfers that season have to navigate water hazards and sand traps, but now they had to avoid geese traps!

I remember walking by some geese, and I usually try to keep my distance from them, however one time I got too close to them, probably only two feet from one. Luckily, it didn’t charge me, but it did give me a verbal warning. One would expect a goose to honk at potential enemies to scare them away, at least that is what I expected. However, when that goose looked at me, it didn’t honk at me, it hissed! The goose hissed at me like a snake ready to strike. As I walked by, I swear from the corner of my eye I could see the goose giving me a dirty smirk. I wouldn’t get that close to another goose for the rest of the semester.

They were fearless creatures all semester long. Those geese would look at oncoming car traffic and be unfazed. I remember how on December 5, I was walking back to my grandparents’ house and noticed that there was a line of four cars stopped and waiting for something. I knew there wasn’t a stop sign or stoplight ahead, so I wondered what was causing the small traffic stop. I walked to the front of the line and saw a gaggle of about nine geese casually taking their time to cross the street, some of them stopping on the asphalt to leave their white and green droppings before walking with the rest of their group. Naturally, I found that the goose crossing scene, where the geese were unfazed and unbothered by monstrous two-to-three ton vehicles, to be pretty funny. So, I stopped my walk and took a video of the geese and the confused drivers who, for the first time, were exposed to goose arrogance.

Although those geese were rude, aggressive, and dirty menaces that semester, I grew to be jealous of them. Except on occasion when my grandparents would visit me for a couple of days during the months, I was alone in their house all semester long. Sure, I had online classes for school, met with the members of KDAWG for our weekly meetings, and had video calls with my parents, my brother, and some of my friends during those months. However, during that semester, I never felt more physically and socially alone. I’m usually comfortable spending small stretches of time by myself, but at some point during the pandemic, I just missed being with people. I grew jealous of the gaggle of geese. Why could they socialize and be with each other while I had to isolate? I just wanted to spend my fall in Redlands with friends and professors, laughing until my sides would hurt, working on assignments all night long to the point where I’d pull my hair, and generally just get up to no good.

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, I had to be alone. Those geese pooped in the street, honked at innocent ducks, chased after golfers, held up traffic, and even hissed at me like snakes. However, the worst thing they did to me that semester was remind me of how alone I was at the time. I left the geese, my grandparents’ house, and Rancho Mirage to head back to my childhood home to start the new year. I got news from my school that students would be allowed to move back on campus for the spring semester and I was packing to move back to Redlands in the middle of January.

That spring, I was able to return to Redlands and spend time living with my friends again. I’m now a senior and it has been a full year since that fall semester I spent isolated in Rancho Mirage. I have been back to my grandparents’ house since that semester and the geese are gone. The mallard ducks on the pond are the dominant fowl again, the streets are clean, and I’m sure the geese have moved on to terrorize another community by now.

Oftentimes, when I find myself alone, I think back to those geese. I think back to them and wonder, if I were to see them again, how would I feel and what would I do? While writing this story and reflecting on my time with those foul fowl, I smiled and thought of what I might want to do. If I heard that they were back on Avenida Las Palmas again, I would make sure to bring my group of friends with me to Rancho Mirage. We would all walk on the golf course grass, approach those evil yet majestic birds, who would be calmly grazing on the grass while flaunting their beautiful brown, black, and white feathers, and we would hiss at them.