Why I Gave My Dad Geese For Christmas

I thought about giving my dad a water buffalo. Or a pig. But neither smacked of the holidays. A camel was tempting but, at $800, out of my price range. And so I settled on a flock of geese.

I don’t think my dad particularly liked the gift. Especially compared to the iPad from his girlfriend. But, I figured, it would be more creative than the World War II books I usually got him. And besides, my family kind of owed the Animal Kingdom.

After the incident.

The boy—who will not be named—had just heard the Mother Goose nursery rhyme on his parents’ farm. Now it just so happened, the father had a prized goose of his own. One he loved and doted on more than all the rest. So, the boy reasoned, there must be a connection.

The father was away in London on business. The grandmother was baby-sitting. She was quite puzzled, then, when she gazed out the back window and saw her chubby, impressionable grandson scoop up the goose and carry it up the slide.

It all made sense to the boy. In the fairy tale, Mother Goose flies up into the heavens, spreading joy to rural England. He didn’t see why this should be any different. So he sat down on the goose and—a puff of feathers later—shattered the goose’s neck in two places, killing it instantly. He rode the dead goose down the slide a screeching inch a second to the grandmother’s hysterics. She messaged the father simply, “K— killed the goose.” Relations were strained ever since.

I don’t think the gift appeased the Animal Kingdom. And my dad didn’t even get the geese. But he couldn’t really get mad, my friend pointed out, it was for a noble cause.

The geese were donated on my dad’s behalf to a needy Chinese family. And they should be welcome relief, as the goose is a surprisingly resourceful animal. She can lay up to 75 eggs a year, providing a valuable source of protein. Geese are also more rugged than you would think. They require minimal shelter and can weather hot, cold, and torrential climates. They are also adept at pulling up weeds and make for effective watchdogs, squawking away unwanted guests.

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Dan West had had enough. The farmer couldn’t tell another destitute Spanish villager that was all the eggs she could have. That there wouldn’t be any left for the others. The Spanish Civil War ended, Franco won, and West came back home to Indiana to get to work.

He founded Heifers for Relief so impoverished families would hopefully never have to depend on relief workers like him ever again. His basic philosophy was the proverb “Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; you have fed him for a lifetime.”

But West had his own original slogan, too: “Give not a cup, but a cow.” He gave each family a cow, a few lessons in animal husbandry, and one request. They must donate female offspring to another family, and so on. Within two years, Heifers for Relief shipped 17 very confused cows to Puerto Rico.

Sixty-six years later, Heifers for Relief has gone global with a presence in 125 countries. It donates not just cows but sheep, rabbits, honeybees, pigs, goats, water buffalo, tree seeds, and the geese. Forbes Magazine named the organization one of its top ten charities.

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“You’re a slave-trader,” the guy in 12B said. “You know that, right?”

I didn’t.

“I saw you order the geese on that Nazi site. You’re a slave-trader.”

“I’m a what and you’re who?”

I was the latest Heifer.org customer. He was a nosy PETA activist. And we were both thirty-two thousand feet up somewhere over Pennsylvania. It was going to get worse before it got better, too. I had ordered the chicken club for lunch.

But, as the guy in 12B and PETA would tell it, I funded animal torture. I was one of many criminals who paid to displace animals to dustbowls and war-torn regions all in the name of Christmas. Heifers for Relief was merely a front, institutionalizing animal slavery under the guise of charity.

“But what about the Chinese family?”

The guy in 12B gave me a you-just-don’t-understand sigh, put his headphones back on, and resumed watching the in-flight Drew Barrymore movie “Going The Distance.”

PETA is also strangely silent over the plight of the families in need. Or that the vegan lifestyle is not an option but a luxury elsewhere across the globe. The website simply states, “Donating animals is no gift for the animals who are ‘gifted’”. “Let them eat mangoes,” one contributor scoffed.

At least Ricky Gervais had a sense of humor about it.

The British comedian and creator of The Office called it the worst gift he ever received. A “friend” donated a goat in his name to an African family for the holidays. Everybody loses, Gervais ranted, the friend is:

50 quid down, I’ve got nothing, the African family’s going, “Not another mouth to feed.” It’s ridiculous. There’s nothing in it for the goat. The goat wakes up in barren land going, “Where am I? A week ago I was gamboling through the Cotswolds in glades and then someone just kidnapped me, put me on a boat, took me to Africa.” It’s like Roots in reverse. I bet he didn’t want to go to Africa. I think the goat had no choice.

PETA activists cheered Ricky Gervais as a hero for his Heifers for Relief riff. Never mind that Ricky Gervais was joking. Never mind that Ricky Gervais is not a vegetarian.

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Suppose there are two lifeboats. One is filled to the brim with 500 geese. The other one seats a curmudgeonly 80 year old man. You can only save one. Which lifeboat do you pick?

You’re supposed to pick the geese lifeboat, because they can collectively “better benefit society” as weed-eaters and watch-dogs. But now what happens if you chip away to 400 geese? 300, 200, and so on. Where do you carve a fine line into the slippery slope of species-ism?

This is a pillar of animal rights argument today. And the architect behind it is the philosopher Peter Singer. Singer argues you can only judge an act as ethical by “the greatest good of the greatest number”. Because once you acknowledge the geese have more “inherent value” than the old man, you cannot deny them rights.

It’s Utilitarian in its argument, clever in its rhetoric. The problem is the folks at PETA took the meaning but lost the message. The problem is PETA interjects itself into issues in a quest to stay more relevant than right.

It starts at the top with Ingrid Newkirk and trickles down to the guy in 12B. The British co-founder of PETA opposes animal testing even if it magically leads to the cure for AIDs. Newkirk incensed many in 2003 when she sent Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat a letter protesting the death of a donkey in a Jerusalem bombing, never mind the human casualties. Newkirk and her associates have pilloried Heifer for Relief for globalizing animal cruelty and hostage-taking.

Newkirk confesses she is a “complete press slut”. She likens herself to Malcolm X and the Black Panther Movement and has endorsed everything short of arson to make the evening news. The problem is social movements like these need a sensible front-man. Malcolm X was too radical to be streamed into Main Street living rooms. The nonviolent Martin Luther King Jr., therefore, was appealing as a PG-13 compromise. Newkirk’s PR moves and rhetoric capture the public’s attention but don’t keep it.

Dan West’s Heifers for Relief offers that middle-ground with a bow on top. It provides a family-friendly, tax-deductible gift for the holidays. It catalogs the capability of honeybees to water buffalo and brings it to a Christmas tree or birthday cake near you. So if you don’t know what to give next Christmas or birthday, try a flock of geese. Or a goat. Your dad or loved one may not understand at first but a family halfway across the globe certainly will.

And to the Chinese family, wherever you are. If you have a pudgy and perhaps naïve young son, remind him to not take the Mandarin translation of Mother Goose too literally.

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