George & Martha

They are named George and Martha as these two beautiful geese live out what appears to be traditional human male/female roles. They live across the channel from us and look for treasure when the tide is low, along the bank of the channel. High water is slightly below where George is at the top of the bank. Martha periodically sits a nest and tries to wander -getting bored with nest sitting. George chases her back to the nest, and does several dips of his huge neck and honks loudly at her in obvious hostility: Martha, get on the nest and quit running around. Martha just looks away, but settles in. When some interlopers flew in but were about 200' feet away from the nest, George went on the rampage and tried to attack the other geese in the air. He is the man of the meadow and no other feathered anythng dare come near them. Martha took the opportunity to explore in another part of the meadow and was chased back to the nest with George's outraged vocals. George has a very determined, vpersonality and uses his honking to keep Martha in line.
Reminds me of some married couples: the loudest partner rules. Unless they are passive aggressive and manipulate such as some old formerly dear friends of ours. George in that couple drank to excess and was mean with his honking. Martha drank to keep him company and later, because it was a place of escape. If you are passed out, you don't hear the bullying or have to deal with the fact that the partner choice was lacking in loyalty and other important areas. He had asked us to say something about her drinking. We did with a simple comment of "perhaps you should slow down the drinking a bit, as it would improve your marriage....etc." and were we sorry as he blamed us for the uproar afterwards. Sad. We didn't need to give in to George, but we loved Martha and were very upset with her self destruction. It was a tough lesson: we could have told George to handle his own drinking; we could have suggested to Martha that her husband was concerned as were we about damage from her drinking; we could have done what the interloper geese did, and fly out of the situation as fast as possible. As it was, we were driven away from the friendship and their situation hasn't changed much and we get some pretty awful and unwelcome communication from them. If they were honest with the life basics, as is George and Martha in their relationship, the humans would have realized that they are responsible for their own behvaior. And if we were smart, we would have realized that we should have just loved them and prayed for healing, for all of us.