The What the Everloving Heck? Department: Goosey, the Feathered First Responder

When I was twelve or so, a family about a mile down the road went on vacation and left me in charge of their geese. Every day I made my way over to feed and water them and basically reassure them that humanity had not abandoned them completely.

The geese would come waddling up, honking and hissing in that particular way geese have, as though they had been waiting all morning for management to arrive so they could discuss several deficiencies in the current level of service. I fed them. I gave them fresh water. I probably told them whatever was going on in my life at the time. They registered their complaints. I went home.

That was the extent of our relationship.

At no point did I look at one of those birds and think, You know, in an emergency, I bet you'd really come through.

Apparently, I underestimated geese.

Last month, a four-month-old goose named Goosey discovered that his family's barn was on fire in the middle of the night. Old wiring was the likely culprit. His owner had fallen asleep on the couch, presumably secure in the reasonable belief that if the property caught fire, one of the usual systems would alert him.

Smoke detector.

Security alarm.

Dog.

Something.

Instead, he got the goose.

Goosey, who until then had apparently been a quiet, almost shy bird, came out of the burning barn and began honking in a way his owner had never heard before. Not the standard goose commentary on food, strangers, weather, passing vehicles, insufficient attention, excessive attention, or the general decline of civilization. These were urgent honks.

Security footage shows Goosey coming out of the barn and sounding the alarm while the fire was still manageable. His owner woke up, grabbed a hose, and put it out. Every chicken, turkey, and rooster inside survived.

Which means a four-month-old goose assessed a developing emergency, evacuated the building, alerted the appropriate human authorities, and remained on scene until help arrived.

I have worked with people who would not have handled this as efficiently.

Although perhaps we shouldn't be quite so surprised. Birds are, after all, living dinosaurs. Goosey is carrying around the genetic legacy of creatures whose ancestors survived one of the more spectacularly unsuccessful periods in Earth's history. You wouldn't necessarily look at a goose and think, There's an animal whose family learned something from the extinction of the dinosaurs. Mostly you look at a goose and think, Why is it coming toward me like that?

But perhaps the ones who survived learned a few things. When something is on fire, get out of the way and make a lot of noise until somebody deals with it.

Seventy-some million years later, apparently the system still works.

Goosey hadn't even been with the family very long. Their daughter met him at a poultry expo at a booth called “Hug a Goose,” which is itself a phrase I would approach with caution, and refused to leave without him.

For the next few months, he apparently kept a low profile. No dramatic rescues. No emergency response training that anyone knew about. No tiny reflective vest hanging beside the barn door.

Then the barn caught fire.

And Goosey went to work.

I've been thinking about the geese I fed when I was twelve. At the time, I regarded them mostly as noisy creatures with strong opinions and very little respect for personal space. It never occurred to me that somewhere underneath all that honking and hissing might lurk an emergency response system.

Maybe one of them would have done exactly what Goosey did.

Or maybe they would have stood safely across the yard honking, I HAVE BEEN WARNING YOU PEOPLE ABOUT THIS BARN FOR YEARS.

Either way, I have clearly been underestimating geese.

Move over, Lassie. Move over, Smokey Bear.

There's a new animal hero in town.

He's four months old, covered in feathers, descended from dinosaurs, and apparently has already figured out that when something goes terribly wrong, the first thing you do is find a human and yell at him until he fixes it.

Hmmm... maybe that's what geese have been doing all along.