The Barnacle Goose

     Mab Graves’ Drawlloween Club 2019 prompt of “cryptid” had many options for me. A jackalope would be an obvious choice, but as I challenge myself to expand on the menagerie of creatures I create I found myself thinking of an old favorite – the Barnacle Goose. Full disclosure, they actually exist. So, not a cryptid then? Well, maybe half a cryptid.

     Besides, many cryptids are based upon real animals (think of the jackalope and rabbits with shope papilloma virus, or the barometz and the wooly chicken fern) so it’s not too shocking of an idea. Native to the Arctic, these geese make their nests on precarious ledges and brutal cliffs to protect themselves and their young from predators. One of the more remarkable aspects of real-life Barnacle Geese is the death-defying plunge they take off these cliffs to the ground below that has the food which will sustain them. Some die in the plummet, others are grabbed by predators at the bottom. You can watch a tense video of the act here in this incredible article from National Geographic.

     In medieval times the belief was held that these fuzzy gray projectiles did not hatch from an egg, but instead emerged from the barnacles that clung to the rocks on the cliffs (hence the name) and plunged to the water below, or from the froth that formed around driftwood (this second means of growth in fact seems to describe gooseneck barnacles). This partly seems due to the fact that their migration patterns had them disappearing during parts of the year and breeding, or “growing”, elsewhere. An apparent convenience of this belief was that the church ruled they were, in fact, a species of fish and therefore OK to consume during Lent or other periods when the pious fasted from the flesh of animals.

     Gerald of Wales in his 12th century History and Topography of Ireland** describes them growing in the manner of foam along driftwood, and is perhaps the earliest mention of the creature and their myth. John Gerard would come along much later in the 1500s and describes the geese as forming in a similar manner and in fact the goose was included in Gerard’s The Herbal, or, General History of Plants* at the very end with a description of the “plant” along with the above engraving on the right, showing what appear to be goslings emerging from gooseneck barnacles.

     Eventually science would reveal the truth to us, but somehow the truth seems just as fabulous. Rather than emerging from driftwood and seafoam, hatching from barnacles fed by the sea, the real Barnacle Geese spends their first days high upon a cliff and then makes an incredible leap of faith the the solid ground below. Watching the downy goslings float in free-fall in the National Geographic video, it seems easier to believe they hatch from barnacles rather than willingly fling themselves to the harsh Arctic ground, while their parents urge them on. Yet, here we are and here they are – existing in a world that seems just as strange as the one described by medieval scholars.

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 Citations:

* Gerard, John. “The Herball, or, The General Historie of Plantes 1545-1612 .” Internet Archive, London, G. Howe, 1 Jan. 1927, archive.org/details/gerardsherball0000gera/page/n3/mode/2up.