Upon taking art history, I’ve learned a plethora of the contextual backgrounds of sculptures, paintings, buildings and everything in between. Some of the artists’ goals included showing the power and authority of the ruler, or to record historical events as well as representing their religious beliefs.

But then I stumbled upon this piece, entitled “Boy With Goose” from Greece, circa 160 BCE, the Late Classical period. (This is right before the Hellenistic Age where sculptures included emotion and motion within the faces of their humans.)

The marble statue features a young baby male stoically strangling the life out of this goose, with no remorse whatsoever.

What I’ve learned from this piece is that our relationship with geese hasn’t change since then.

With their necks held high and squawks heard all year round in Illinois is:  The Canadian Goose.

These feathered heathens leave most of our porches during the winter; however, the time they do stay here wrecks chaos- from poop-encrusted sidewalks to the roads where they gather for probably satanic-related rituals for us humans.

I remember when I’d wake up in the morning; I’d hear the flock of geese flying over my house, screeching as they fly somewhere to not contribute to society.

From an article titled, “Canada Goose Ecology and Impacts in New Jersey” by the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station, they list positive and negative traits about these hellish nightmares. Geese don’t do anything special besides spreading different seeds and providing food for other animals. They claim that people purposefully buy binoculars to observe geese at parks, but I personally disagree, since I go to parks to birdwatch rare, smaller, more colorful birds than the grey-brown-black-white large bird that is the Canadian goose.

In the negatives aspect, geese trample farmer’s crops and graze on their fields, they damage turf grass, ruin places from their amount of copious poop, damaging destroyed wetlands, attacking humans, spreading diseases and making us beep the horns on our cars because they refuse to get out of the way.

They also have this thing, where they like to stare at the depths of your soul, just waiting to pounce you and feed off of your children.

Which is why I don’t blame this boy strangling the ever-loving squawk out of these geese.

I have no sympathy. The baby has no sympathy.

Is it wrong that I feel a sick sort of satisfaction that I can almost hear the goose screeching out its’ last breaths?  Every single creature needs to defend themselves against these terrors.

Geese attack other animals, as I have stumbled upon a gif of a gorilla at a zoo running backwards as this Canadian devil charges forward, wings spread with a look of pure evil in its beady eyes.

It’s child’s’ play at how easy it is to search proof of these demons terrorizing our fellow humans.

One could defend these winged creatures saying,“Oh they’re protecting their young, don’t blame them.” In the video, “Goose Attacks Students at Warwick University,” the students are not going out of their way to harass the nest, they are simply passing by. The goose chases the man who has his head down and swathed in his hoodie, trying to protect himself rather than taking on the animal.

If the situation presented itself where I had encountered a normal goose, (by normal I mean evil), I would probably run and cry because geese have teeth all around the inside of their beaks and they can fly which is terrifying and oh did I mention that their tongues also have teeth on the sides of their mouths because they do as well as beady eyes that warn anyone who happens to look at them “the wrong way” that they will make sure you won’t live to see another day.

An article titled “Woman Attacked by a Canada Goose Spends 5 Days in Hospital,” on DailyKos, describes a woman on a bike ride who ended up spending five days in the hospital from a combined geese attack- the geese misjudged her fast speed as an attack and she describes how the one of the geese wrapped its wings around her head as she screamed.

Geese are out to get you.

It’s a fact, plain and simple, they have been dreaming about the extinction of the human race since the beginning of time.

So, whenever encountered with a goose that is probably out to get you this fall, find a baby, a Greek baby, and pray to God that they know a thing or two about wrestling.