For most of us, being a Canada Goose is pretty easy and has some great perks. Lots of people feed us bread and corn and then they "ooh" and "ahh" when they see us swimming by or flying in the familiar V-shaped formation for which we are famous.

Also, it seems that we all look alike, but my mom and dad could tell each of us apart from the other goslings, as could the other mom and dad geese. They just know! But I found out at an early age that I really was "different" from the other Canada Geese and, unfortunately, the other geese (except for my immediate family members) always chased me away and didn't want me around them.

When I was just a young goose, I was swimming with the flock and, as usual, I wasn't paying attention to where I was going. There were so many neat things to look at, like flowers, bees, fish, turtles, and even humans. That fateful day, however, changed my life forever. All of a sudden, I heard this loud crash and then my head started throbbing. My mom and dad stopped to see if I was okay; I had just ran smack into the corner of an aluminum pier. OUCH!

The rest of the flock (104 total) kept swimming so, not to be left behind, I tried to "shake it off" and continue. But, oh, how my head hurt! And then when I looked at my reflection in the water, I saw a big, ugly knot on the top of my head. It wasn't pretty . . .

When we finally got to our destination, a grassy yard where a nice lady fed us bread and corn every afternoon, I thought I'd better rest for awhile. Everyone liked the lady but we were all warned to keep our distance because we really couldn't trust humans, ANY humans! That day, however, my head hurt too bad to eat so I didn't even try. But over the next several days, the rest of the geese started looking at me funny. Like I was a leper or something. When the others were splashing around playing, they wouldn't let me splash with them. And then, when we were eating in the lady's yard, they would chase me away and pull my feathers out. They wouldn't let me eat anymore.

Finally, I grew to accept the fact that they all hated me so I just stayed in the background, a sad, lonely goose. One day when they were all eating a big feast of cracked corn, the lady saw me standing by myself. All the others were practically inhaling the corn and didn't notice her move to the back of the flock. She knelt down and asked me, in a gentle voice, what happened to me. I guess she saw the knot on my head. It had gotten worse and was all swelled up now.

I was too weak to run away from her, so I just kind of sat there and hissed at her. She held out her hand and, alas, she had CORN in it. I was starving! But she was a human and humans were NOT to be trusted. That was one of our basic goose rules. What a dilemma!

Hunger won the contest however, and I moved closer to her. Then, out of nowhere, one of the other geese (one of the popular goslings that was a part of the "in" crowd), who obviously wanted to show off, came at me squawking and spitting. That meant I had to run away before I got bit. All of a sudden, the gentle lady stood up and said a soft, but stern, "NO!" And he stopped. He didn't bite me. And she looked at me and said, "Knothead, go ahead and eat!"

From then on, that was our daily routine. And boy did I get to eat. She even saved back the really "good" stuff for me, whom she lovingly called "Knothead," like I was somebody special. And the other geese didn't ever mess with me anymore when she was around. I liked it here in her yard. We spent many summer afternoons there . . . As summer progressed, however, something started happening -- my knot was getting smaller. I'd look at my reflection in the lake and I could barely see it anymore. Finally, nothing was left of it at all except a little bald spot where the knot once was.

Then, as the flock does every year (this was my first, so it was all new to me), we started practicing flying. But, I wasn't very good at it. There were three others, who started hanging around me, who couldn't fly very well either. We were "misfits," I guess.

Our worst nightmare came true one day. All the geese were doing their practice flying and formations and, suddenly, they just kept going. My three friends and I couldn't believe what had happened. The flock had left us behind. . . We swam up and down the lake looking for them. Maybe they were just playing a trick on us or something. We searched every inch of the shore. Nothing. They were gone and we were all alone. What now? The only thing I could think of was to go to the nice lady's yard and wait. So, that's what we did.

It didn't take her long to figure out what had happened. But she was extra nice to us and gave us all we wanted to eat and even petted us a little (my friends were still leery of her, but I KNEW she would never hurt any of us)! The days were long without the others, so we spent time splashing around in the water and flapping our wings.

And then it just happened. There were only four of us, but we were playing the formation game (like we'd seen the other geese play) and we were flapping and flapping and, suddenly, we weren't in the water anymore. WE WERE FLYING! It took us a little longer than the rest of the flock, but we had finally learned what we were supposed to learn -- to fly. It was the best sensation I had ever experienced.

Only a day or so later, we were taking a short nap when my ears picked up a familiar sound. Yes, it was the honking of Canada Geese -- MY Canada Geese. The entire flock came skidding to a halt in the lake and my mom, dad, brothers and sisters came swimming toward me at full speed. Boy, was I glad to see them!

Of course, they had been terribly worried about me but had to leave with the others. Every year there were always a couple of "slow learners" and, no doubt that knot on my head helped make me one of the slow ones. But now they had come back for us to see if we could fly yet. And we could . . . all four of us!

We took off that very afternoon (and the nice lady didn't even get to feed us again) and flew high up in the air over cornfields and wheat fields. We would stop and eat wheat and corn every so often. But we had to practice our formations and flight plans before the "big trip" down south in the fall. And so we spent the next month or so just flying above the countryside and taking in the beautiful sights.

The day finally arrived for that long journey to warmer grounds. Because we had flown north quite a bit, we had to make stops along the way to eat and rest. When we were going in for a landing one sunny, fall day, I recognized something very familiar. We were making a rest stop at our lake, MY LAKE, where I had once called home. As we swam the well-known route around the shore, we approached the one place where I had been treated with kindness, regardless of what I looked like. And she, my one human friend, was there waiting for us with open arms and plenty of corn.

As we ate, she walked around our flock, calling out, "Knothead, Knothead?" But she couldn't see me. Finally, I realized that, after all this time had passed, the knot, that had once made me so ugly and rejected, was totally gone. My feathers had grown in nicely over the bare spot.

I tried to get her attention, but everybody was honking and flapping around, anxious to get started on our journey again, and she couldn't hear me nor see me amongst the others. What I had always wanted to happen had finally happened -- I was a big, beautiful, majestic Canada Goose. I was now part of the flock and was no longer shunned because I was different.

Right then, the leader honked for us to get back in formation. I took one last look back at the lady who had taken me, a sickly goose she called "Knothead," LITERALLY, under her gentle wings. Even though I now looked like any other Canada Goose in any other flock, I knew that I would always be different.

Even though my body was strong and muscular, my sturdy wings could make me fly thousands of miles, and my head was now smooth and flawless, that little ugly gosling appropriately named "Knothead" would forever live in my heart . .