By Paul DiSclafani
We’ve been neighbors with Tom and Jackie in Massapequa since moving next door in 1988. Jackie was having breakfast the other day when her cell phone rang. It was her son John.
“Mom,” John excitedly said, “You’ve got to come over here. I have a surprise. It’ll be so worth it.”
Not that she needed an excuse to see her son, who lives just a few miles away in Lindenhurst, but the last time he had a surprise to show her, he discovered a turtle. As a kid, John relished his role as an amateur Zookeeper, collecting small creatures like frogs or crabs as his “Pet of the Day.” Inevitably, Jackie would end up releasing the creature later that night.
So she grabbed her husband, and they headed to John’s house.
Upon arriving in Lindenhurst, they were greeted by a small gosling. The brown, black, and white downy feathered little guy had followed John’s girlfriend Falyn and their dog Jules home from their morning walk.
“He was the cutest thing I had ever seen,” Jackie gushed.
Once the kids decided to name the gosling Jessie Frankie, Jackie couldn’t allow this poor creature to be abandoned. She was determined to find a proper home.
Tom, Jackie, and John took Jessie Frankie down to the beachfront park at the end of John’s block near the tip of Shore Road Park and Strong’s Creek to search for a suitable family of geese. They dismissed the two adult geese with no children as an unsuitable match (maybe they were bachelors?) and concentrated on a different gaggle. This one had parents and goslings. Jackie was concerned that the goslings were much younger and Jessie Frankie wouldn’t be accepted.
But Tom had other ideas. With the gaggle making their way into the water, Tom decided to follow them, hoping that Jessie Frankie, who had followed him everywhere up to that point, would continue to do so. Going barefoot and negotiating the algae-covered rocks, he waded out as Jessie Frankie obediently followed him. Unfortunately, the gosling didn’t get the hint, refusing to go further than Tom. Of course, once out of the water, Jessie Frankie followed Tom through the park, down the street, and back to John’s.
Now what?
Sitting in the backyard to plot their next move, the gosling took residence on Tom’s feet, nestling itself between Tom’s ankles, not unlike penguin chicks in the Antarctic.
“He was so cute, I wanted to keep him,” Jackie said. However, after considering the known sanitary habits of geese, she quickly reconsidered.
Although John and Falyn needed to return to work, it wasn’t in Jackie’s nature to give up. Once, while walking along Tobay Beach with my wife and another friend on an unusually mild winter day, they came upon a beached seal. Jackie was so adamant about helping the creature that she waited hours, even as the weather turned cold, for someone from the Riverhead Aquarium to arrive and check out the seal, only to find that it just needed them to leave it alone. It was only resting.
Jackie recalled her many walks around John Burns Park in Massapequa and all the geese families she encountered. A light bulb went off in her head.
They put Jessie Frankie into a small box and drove to Burns, hoping to find a better family match. Spying a prospective gaggle with five or six siblings, Jackie carefully placed Jessie Frankie near them and hightailed it out of the way, only to find her shadow was still chasing her.
Tom decided to give it one more try, this time placing a small bowl of watermelon pieces and grass, along with Jessie Frankie, near the family. Think of it as a peace offering.
“The adults were watching me carefully. As I turned to leave, Jessie Frankie began following me. But this time, one of the adult geese stepped between us, nudging him back with the rest of them. That’s when we knew everything was going to be OK.”
Hiding behind a bush, the proud parents almost wept when they realized their baby was leaving the nest.
