On the far side of this pond, too tiny to see in this morning Montana mist, there sits a mated pair of Canada geese. They have been coming to this island each spring for years to have their babies. These geese are murderous assholes.

Every year they arrive, settle in, build a nest, carefully guard and tend to it, welcome several fluffy fuzzy chicks, swim around adorably for 2-3 days, then march the tiny days-old chicks into the woods on wobbly legs. A day or two later the two adult geese come back alone and carry on with their lives, babies long gone in the forest. Other pairs of geese come and join them. They socialize, fight, bitch at each other, and probably wife-swap. You can almost smell the Marlboro smoke, sketti, and peach-flavored wine over the hum of daytime goose television and bad life choices.

The first year they led their babies to their death, we thought “How sad!” and wondered what had drawn them to the woods.

The second year, when they did the same thing, we thought “Those are some stoooopid geese.”

The third year, well, it started to smell fishy.

And now, a few years later, they are just murderous psychopaths.

I find this encouraging somehow. In a time when most people look more and more alien to me, the idea that it isn’t a uniquely human disease to be totally crazypants and wired against nature somehow is helpful. We like to project nobility onto nature, even accepting the need to kill for survival, we turn quietly away when our beloved dogs disembowel frogs slowly and for gruesome entertainment, when rabbits feast on the smallest babies, and when geese prefer the swinging single life to raising young. I don’t think people are special. I just thinking we haven’t been watching nature carefully enough.

As long as these geese keep acting like psychopaths, I feel a little less estranged from humanity. And there are probably enough geese anyway.