Imprinting

We have had geese, ducks, and chickens at Wyldswood since the end of March, and guineas since late April. All were purchased from box stores at only a few days old, and spent their first couple weeks living with us at the house under a heat lamp. Other than perhaps a UPS driver or a clerk at Tractor Supply, we were the only adults they'd encountered.

Now grown, all of them display what animal psychologists call "imprinting": basically, they think we're their parents, and follow us around whenever we're outside, demanding attention.

And no, I'm not a two-fisted drinker---P just needed someone to hold her glass to take the picture.

The idea of imprinting was first developed by Konrad Lorenz, an Austrian psychologist. His geese loved him too.

What the geese didn't know was that, before he developed the theory of imprinting, he was heavily involved in studies for the Nazis of ethology, and whether race-mixing affected the work ethic of the offspring of pure Aryans and Slavs. We humans are complicated beings, with lives we'd sometimes love to airbrush. Maybe old Konrad felt that way--we do know he omitted the worst of his work from his memoirs. The unconditional love, or loyalty, or whatever a goose feels whenever he runs honking toward the truck when we pull up, feels so good perhaps because they don't know us for what we are, and don't care. There is something of the divine in all that.

Of course, my sainted mother, a former professor herself, pointed out that my superficial understanding of imprinting is a little flawed.

"But Mike, 'imprinting' means they think of a human as their mother."

"Mom, more than a few folks would describe me that way. Maybe the chickens are onto something."

As mothers go, P and I are sensing our inadequacies in guiding these creatures into what it really means to be a duck or a goose or a guinea. The ducks won't eat frogs or cruise the edges of the pond helping to chomp down the foliage. The geese's attempts to fly barely get out of ground effect. The guineas won't fly up and roost in the trees as God intended, and at least two of them have become supper for predators as a result. We have rendered our children "sorry," to use the Southern descriptive, and all they want to do is sit under the house and wait for us to emerge, so they can send up a bird cheer and follow us around the property.

And then we throw them some chicken feed, and they fall into a delighted feeding frenzy.

Looking at our relationship with all of them, it becomes obvious to me why folks who grew up on a farm raise their children a little differently than us suburbanites. It's so easy to fall into a sort of co-dependency that entails exchanging goodies for unquestioning loyalty and affection. We are a lot more like geese than we care to admit.

I guess this would all be different if we had plans to serve them for supper, but I imagine these creatures are going to outlive us, if the foxes and coyotes don't get them. And that's okay.