Angry Geese
For all of recorded history, the Holy Grail has been the holy grail of ancient, lost relics. Although very little is actually known about the holy goblet, it remains a target of fascination for millions of people all around the world and the subject of millions of dollars worth of expedition fees by various governments and organizations trying to finally track down its long-lost location.
Nobody knows for certain where the Grail is, but of the many possibilities, one has often been overlooked. The Church of Christ the Gosling was a small and deeply, deeply unpopular Christian sect known for syncretizing the story of Jesus assuming his true divinity with the tale of the ugly duckling. According to conventional history, church members all died after they were all forced onto a boat and made to sail into unknown waters, but can we be certain of this? After all, geese are a well-known renewable food source. Could they have made it to America, settled the Ithaca region and buried their greatest treasure, the Grail, within one of its great lakes before dying of malnutrition caused by eating nothing but duck byproducts? It’s impossible to say for sure. All that we can be certain of is that those geese who nest in Ithaca today match many historical descriptions of the Church’s trained attack geese, bred for hostility and absolute malice over the course of many goose generations.
With this in mind, can we be certain then that Ithaca College represents a real financial institution? Or is it nothing more than a front for a shadowy international criminal ring hoping to get their hands on the Grail for their own evil ends? After all, the Grail has many powers that could be used for evil, probably. How else could you explain the fifteen credits in “Looking Busy” each student is expected to take as part of any major or the three outbuildings that are just propped-up cardboard cutouts which get you tackled by security guards if you get too close to them?
For decade after decade, this shadowy organization must have been stymied in their efforts by the difficulty of training goons to possess the necessary mental fortitude and tensile skin strength to stand against the deep pain represented by an armed and organized goose counter-assault. However, this may have come to an end. It is very possible that this unknown organization has at last captured the Grail, perhaps due to the geese being impeded by their obligation to adhere to pandemic countermeasures which the goons, being evil, did not need to bother with. This can be inferred by the deduction that if any larger organization ever had a hand in Ithaca College, it has clearly now pulled out and left it to rot.
Peter Tkaczyk is a fourth-year writing major who has trained an army of geese to pick up his takeout orders. You can reach them at [email protected].
Art by Art Editor Adam Dee.