Latter-day explanations of how the white geese came to be in Cambridge have skewed towards mythology, casting a faint heroic aura over the flock. Long ago, it is said, they were appointed as guardians. The powers that be at the Water Authority called on them to keep watch over its hardworking employees. Strip away the accumulation of myth, and the temple of the goddess is revealed as a sewage treatment plant. It was a diesel operator at the plant who, for a lark, brought six geese there in the mid-1980s.

What he did not anticipate, it seems, is that they would multiply. Every year, there were more geese. Uneasy about the flock’s growth, but feeling a sense of responsibility, the diesel man kept feeding them. From a population control standpoint, this did not help. One fertile spring, the number of geese doubled. Suddenly there were dozens of raucous, hungry, earthbound farmyard birds stuck in an urban park. Without a migratory instinct or even an inclination towards flight, the geese had become permanent residents.

Eventually, the sewage plant was modernized and the goose man no longer had a job there. Cut adrift, the flock found refuge slightly downriver in an overgrown wedge of state-owned riverbank next to the nearly untrafficked railroad. By then, a funny thing had happened. People who took a liking to the geese had begun feeding them. The flock now counted close to a hundred, and in such large numbers, could not survive on what they were able to forage. They could easily devour fifty pounds of grain, pellets, produce, and stale bread daily. Their new caretakers started visiting them twice a day. Before long, they were able to identify each animal, giving them names that seemed to fit their personalities.