Thing To Do Today. Or Possibly Not: be anserine.

To be anserine is to be like a goose.

Is that a good thing?

Well, I started today wrapped snugly in a feather duvet, and that was lovely. Geese are splendid burglar alarms, are good at navigation, and can exist quite happily on green vegetables.

Geese of the genus Anser are grey, which is dead fashionable (though there are Branta and Chen geese, too, which have areas of black and white on them, respectively).

Geese are rather rare (not really a good thing): even the commonest goose, the greylag:(Anser anser)



has a population of only about a million, and there are only 2,500 nene (you say that nay-nay).

Perhaps we should all take geese as our role models...

...though on the other hand they do honk, some have a habit of bullying other members of their flock, and if someone is said to be a goose then that means they're silly of foolish (anserine can mean the same).

Still, given the chance of being able to fly while wrapped in my own custom-fitted duvet then I could see myself being quite tempted.

And the built-in wellies would be jolly useful, too.


Photo of a Bean Goose, Anser fabalis, by Adrian Pingstone

Thing To Do Today. Or Possibly Not: be anserine. This word comes from anser, which is Latin for goose.