1998: A Flock of geese and ducks in Ashley Pond. Photo by Zhen Huang

Displaced children. Ismael Mohamad/UPI / Courtesy/Zhen Huang

By ZHEN HUANG
Los Alamos

As a Los Alamos resident, I am probably among the few who have kept photos taken a quarter century ago with a note like this one, “1998: A Flock of Geese and Ducks in Ashley Pond”. But I believe many of us may still remember the incident when the aerator pump failed, the pond froze, some of these happy geese and ducks residing in Ashley Pond were rescued, and others disappeared.

During this Christmas Holiday, Los Alamos folks will celebrate the life of our beloved Los Alamos Goose Homer who left us a year ago. In the meantime, we will honor an official name for a newcomer of Ashley Pond. I thought about those disappeared geese and ducks. Although they didn’t have the honor to be given a name, they have been remembered for the joy and warmth they had brought to us during those cold winter break holidays.

While Los Almost goose Homer was lucky to share the same name as the ancient Greek poet Homer, all those disappeared geese and ducks had brought us poetic inspirations. During those years, when I went to see those geese and ducks in Ashley Pond and listened to them singing, I often recalled a popular poem every Chinese kid learned in kindergarten.

The Chinese poem was written by a Tang Dynasty poet when he was 7 years old. It begins with 鹅,鹅,鹅… “goose, goose, goose…”, and goes like this:

goose, goose, goose…
how loudly a goose sings
how proudly a goose sings
how joyfully a goose sings

In a child’s native mind, a goose sings the same song as he does.

In Chinese, the character goose “鹅” consists of two characters. One is 我, which refers to the human individual. The other is 鸟, which refers to all wild birds. In Chinese Culture, all geese sing a universal song: “All living beings are one family.” That is the heart and soul of Chinese Philosophy.

Over the years, while I missed the disappeared geese and ducks, I also recalled the argument made as an excuse regarding the management negligence as if these pond residents had voluntarily left their home and fled south.

A small town’s management negligence caused a flock of residential geese and ducks fleeing and becoming homeless. What would a large country’s management failure do to its vulnerable residents?

Just look at what’s happening in the Gaza Strip. Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population — over 1.7 million residents, have been forced to flee south since Israel began its retaliatory operations against Hamas…

This Christmas holiday, please remember the millions of homeless “Geese and Ducks”, the Palestinian Children in particular, in Gaza Strip.