22 Supplemental History

# ON DOMESTIC AND WILD GEESE

To the ancient history of domestic geese, we must add a recent instance of these animals' vigilance recorded by Juan Eusebio Nieremberg of Madrid. This event occurred in the year of our salvation 1628, in Livorno, where a certain man of African descent had stolen an image of the Christ Child during the night. As he was making off with the icon, he encountered a flock of geese that rushed at him with great force. Some of these geese gripped the thief's clothes with their beaks and, flying toward the monastery tower with their wings, actually rang the bell; others cackled so dreadfully that they woke the residents. When the people finally roussed themselves and ran to the scene, they caught the thief red-handed. Thus, it should no longer be said that Rome alone was saved by the watchfulness of these birds.

Furthermore, to the category of wild geese, we must add the Magellanic goose, so named by Clusius because the Dutch found it in the islands of the Magellanic Sea. These sailors, however, called such birds "penguins" because of their abundant fat. This is a remarkable bird of the goose family, though it has a different sort of beak; it lives at sea and is always overflowing with a great quantity of fat. It is the size of a very large goose, covered with black feathers on its front and white on its back and around the belly. The neck is thick and short, encircled by white feathers like a collar. The skin is thick and dense, much like that of a pig. It lacks wings, in place of which two fins, looking as if they were made of leather, hang down on either side like arms. These are covered with short, narrow, and stiff feathers on the front, while the back has smaller, stiffer white feathers, occasionally mixed with black. These fins are useless for flight but provide the animal with the greatest assistance in swimming. Since it spends most of its time in the water, it seeks land only for the sake of its offspring.

Indeed, four or five birds of this kind nest in a single pit, for they dig very wide and deep burrows on the shore, much like rabbit warrens. Sometimes these are so deep that sailors walking along the shore frequently fall into them up to their knees. These birds have a beak larger than a crow's, though not as high, and a very short tail. Their feet are black, flat, and shaped like those of a goose, though not quite as wide. They walk upright with their heads held high, their fins hanging at their sides like arms, so that from a distance they look to onlookers like so many little men or pygmies walking along. They truly resemble that monstrous hen kept at the home of the most illustrious Fulvio Antonio Marescalchi, whose image can be seen in the fifth chapter of our *History of Monsters*. These birds, then, are perhaps the same geese that Gomara wrote about, claiming they were without feathers, never left the sea, and were covered with a kind of down instead of plumage.

In addition, two different species of geese wander the Faroe Islands. The first is called the *Helsingegaas*; it is the size of a goose, has a large head and neck encircled by a white collar, a white breast, greyish-white wings, a blue-tinted back, and red feet. The second species is called the *Erandgaas*, which is slightly smaller than a wild goose, with a greyish-white head, a reddish neck adorned with a collar, a tawny breast, and red wings and feet. These species of wild geese are very rarely seen in the Faroes and do not breed there; where they come from and where they migrate remains unknown to anyone. However, through long experience, a certain superstition has taken root there: that whenever birds of this kind appear, a change in the government is imminent.