Chapter 75: Strapping Maggots on Backs

The Canadian Geese landed in the same precise wedge-formations they had flown the many hundreds of miles from their upstate home. One by one, they glided to a stop on the calm Canoe Lake. With the tourists still away and Mother’s Day, when the Black Fly season would begin, still a week off, the Lord had risked bringing his Maggots down close to the park headquarters.

Geese sure knew how to fly long distances.

The ones at the tip of each V-formation provided uplift for those in the rear, increasing their flight range up to 70 percent. All the honking was encouragement from those in the rear to those in front to keep going. Leaders rotated throughout the journey, moving backwards to rest in flight. Should any Goose develop a sore throat from too exuberant honking or a weak wing from too excessive flapping, and have to temporarily drop out, two others always accompanied it down to stand guard while on the ground.

Big Al’s trigger finger was itching with delight at the sight of so many fat, succulent butter balls. There were enough to last him a lifetime of Boxing Day Goose dinners. Only the fact he had not yet been paid by the Captain for services rendered prevented him from taking a few pot shots.

The Captain was happy for a different reason. He was relieved so many of his transport brigade had made the trip. Reinforcements were landing by the minute. The more flamboyant flocks first made a wide sweep of the lake, wheeled and then dove to a smooth landing. These antics set off a honking hootenanny by those already in the water.

Geese sure knew how to have fun.

On shore, the proud “poppa,” the Lord of the Black Flies, sporting a pair of sunglasses borrowed from the Captain to ward off the midday sun, looked on, like a dapper Don, as his offspring were readied for shipment. He was a big booster of the amazing properties of the larval stage of Flies. Maggots ate only dead tissue, a most fortunate attribute for cleansing wounds in any animal. At The Babe’s urging, the Lord would eventually found a whole new branch of medicine that would lead to the eradication of cancer.

The logistics of strapping a million Maggots to the backs of God knows how many Geese was daunting, to say the least.

The Babe described this tremendous undertaking in her treatise on war. “There was so much to calculate and so little to reference. How much did a Maggot weigh? How much could a Goose transport? How much more could a Gander carry than a Hen?” She went on to list a host of other incredibly difficult considerations.

“This was research of the most basic kind,” she wrote. “Most of the decisions made by the Captain on that desolate Canadian lake would set the standard for years to come.”

The Babe compared the Maggot Airlift with other great materiel movements of the past, like the American Lend-Lease deals with Great Britain and Russia in World War II, the Berlin Airlift at the outset of the Cold War, and the Second Iraq invasion in 2003 (but not the mismanaged pullout decades later).

While lauding the Captain for his organizing efforts, she assigned much of the credit to the Geese themselves. “Not only did they have to fly hundreds of miles with cumbersome knapsacks on their backs, but they had to do it while conveying squirmy, gooey living things,” she wrote.

The Babe couldn’t help but drift off course for a short aside. “Had Swallows been big enough to carry the weight, they easily could have handled the Maggots. Then, the problem would have been too much attraction, not revulsion, to the cargo. Unscheduled lunch breaks with one Swallow lightening the load of another by eating the contents of his pack could have been a major stumbling block,” she wrote.

“The Geese had precisely the opposite problem,” she said. “As herbivores, they could barely countenance carrying these grotesque, in their eyes, at least, creatures on their backs. More than one Goose that day had to be calmed when they were initially loaded up. The unrelenting wriggling of the Maggots and their reputation for being parasitic were just too, too disconcerting. Many Geese were so upset it took them three or four attempts to get off the ground,” The Babe wrote.

“Once airborne, the Maggots didn’t have enough sense to settle down. Geese were anal retentive anyway. Even when not carrying cargo, they always religiously defecated before taking off and assiduously strove to maintain a proper trim while in flight,” The Babe wrote.

‘Now, with the added burden of Maggots, the Geese’s precise V–formation devolved into a scrawled series of ‘Ws’ as each honker struggled with the wriggling mass on its back. This was embarrassing for the usually punctilious Geese,” The Babe wrote.

By the end of the day, all the Maggots had been dispatched south. The Captain bid the Lord farewell and he headed off with Big Al for a short paddle back to his car and an eventual flight to the upstate area. There, he would meet with the Geese and arrange for the dispersal of the Maggots.

Taking his leave, the Captain thanked Big Al for all his efforts, paid him — even reluctantly tipping him despite all the trouble he had caused — and politely promised to meet again.

“We definitely haven’t seen the last of each other, ehhh?,” Big Al said in parting.