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THERE'S A GOOSE ON THE LOOSE


THERE'S A GOOSE ON THE LOOSE


There is an old nursery rhyme that my English friends taught me. It goes:
Goosey Goosey Gander
Where do you wander?
Upstairs and Downstairs
And in my Lady's Chamber

Like most nursery rhymes it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me and its real meaning is not very clear.

Mother Goose
But what is clear is that we have a big grey goose as a neighbour, and while she doesn't actually visit our 'chambers' she does wander around a lot. I assuming this goose is actually not a Gander and is a 'she'. There used to be three of them that would hang around in a sort of 'Goosey-Gang' and one of them was much, much larger and was fond of flapping his huge wings, arching his neck and honking loudly to scare off the local dogs (and the occasional drunken idiot on his way home from 'Bia Hoi' who tried to pat them). I always preseumed this protective behaviour was carried out by the male of the gang -the Gander- so I always figured the two other (smaller and much more well-behaved) geese were females... who knows.



Anyway, these three grey gangsters would waddle confidently around the lakeside and in and out of the pavement cafes, picking up scraps, honking and occasionally squirting poo onto whatever or whoever got in their way. We never really knew who owned them, but they seemed in fine health and large and plump. Then suddenly, just around the Lunar New Year ('Tet' - February 10) the gang of three was reduced by two-thirds and only one goose remained. Hmmm... 

Actually, in Vietnamese the name for this kind of large goose is 'ngông' which is very close in sound and spelling to the word 'ngon' - which means 'delicious'.  So, sadly, our theory is that the geese were being cared for and fattened up to become a delicious dish for someone' New Year's feast. Why one goose was spared the chop is a mystery. So now 'she' pokes around on her own.


 CHEEP- CHEEP
 CHIM-CHIMMANEE
 ROCKY THE COCKY


Actually in our street there is quite a collection of poultry. It is something you will often see and hear all over Hanoi. Even though Hanoi is a big city of over 6.5 million permanent residents, it is really still a collection of urban villages, and people often still behave like they're in the village and keep all sorts of birds for food and/or fun. Every morning we are woken by the sound of roosters crowing - even though we are only around 1 km from the centre of the city! People keep chickens for eggs and chickens for the pot. There are also the ugly 'Fighting Chickens' used for street cock-fights and gambling (the losers usually end up in the soup pot). Everywhere you will see all kinds of little singing birds -'chim'- in beautiful, decorative bamboo cages. For us, just down the road from the Hotel Nikko we have the company of our local grey goose. May she wander around happily for a long time.

So, be good to a goose, and cheeky to a chicken ...and be kind to each other eh?
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