(air rushes)
(ding)
NARRATOR: We were supposed to leave yesterday,
but the winds were too strong.
(tentative music)
And then this morning, snow started to fall.
So we waited until the afternoon,
until it let up
and the winds died down and the skies cleared up.
It was a beautiful winter day in the Bronx.
The perfect day for a calm migration.
(honks)
MAN: We had only stopped there for a week or two
on our way from Shawinigan, Quebec
to the Potomac Shores Golf Club in Virginia,
where the weather was just barely warm enough
and there's plenty of grass,
with a nice view of the river.
We'd been going there ever since I can remember
and stopping here by the Hudson too.
Ever since I can remember.
Always the same path,
but with ever-changing landmarks.
Like the diamond-shaped green they tore down in Queens...
That had blue and orange plastic
surrounding my favorite lawn,
before they turned it into a parking lot.
(horn honks)
The Hudson is our last stop before the Potomac,
and also my favorite.
It's still one of the most beautiful places in the world.
It's where I met my wife, Sharona.
(honks)
It was only my second year
when I saw her down by the lake,
dipping her feet in the water.
And I knew then
I'd spend the rest of my life with her,
doing summers in Shawinigan and winters in Virginia,
eating grain and relaxing...
And flying that same path for the rest of our lives,
along with the rest of the flock.
Even as the skylines all kept changing,
we'd stay the same
and we wouldn't lose our way
because it's in our bones.
It's instinctual.
Primitive.
I look up at the sky a little before 3:00.
Wind speed, ten knots;
temperature, minus six;
visibility about ten miles.
A perfect day to fly.
(triumphant music)
♪ ♪
As we take to the air, I feel a familiar motion,
a deep sense that this is really where I belong,
more so than the lake in Shawinigan,
and much more so than the golf course on the Potomac.
I belong here, in the air,
flying safely over all the noise,
high above the city,
that unintelligible mess of spires and skyscrapers;
that island which became,
for reasons unknown to a simple goose like me,
the very center of all the world.
♪ ♪
This is where I belong.
This is what God has intended for me and my flock,
Canadian geese flying high above the Hudson
on a cool winter day in January.
This is all I was ever meant to do.
(whoosh)
But the engines came at us at 180 miles per hour.
(whoosh)
And my head hit the windshield,
cracking my neck, killing me in an instant.
The other birds at the front didn't have any time either,
and the weaker ones in the back
all got shredded just the same.
All the kids, the first years.
It was a complete and utter massacre.
Among our fellow geese, the story will spread
that it was because I wasn't looking,
that I got distracted,
pontificating about life and my place in the universe.
Among the humans around the world,
the story won't even mention our names.
It'll just say that
thankfully, no one was hurt.
It will talk about us like an inconvenience,
like a puddle you step in on the way to work.
And at least one groundskeeper
at the Potomac Shores Golf Club
will think to himself,
"Good riddance."
Because all we ever were to him were pests,
and all we ever were to the humans around the world
was background scenery
or target practice
or alternative game meat.
(bell dings)
Because they never saw us as real beings
with real feelings and emotions...
(honks)
With homes that get too cold
and partners that we fall in love with
for the rest of our lives.
They never even considered
that there was something outside of themselves.
(melancholy music)
♪ ♪
Action.
NARRATOR: And so their cowboys will immortalize their story
on IMAX screens with America's sweethearts.
We did our jobs.
NARRATOR: But who will play Sharona?
And who will play me?
Who will remember the fallen foul of that day,
the birds who haunt but never complain
as the humans below destroy the earth
and change the terrain,
turning rural fields into exclusive country clubs.
♪ ♪
Sometimes I think about him,
that weird little man
with his little white moustache,
and I wonder,
does he ever think of me?
Does he ever stop to think,
"I wonder what that goose was like,
"who he chose as a mate,
and where his favorite lawn was"?
Did he ever even see me as a life,
with a longer neck and more feathers,
but no less deserving of understanding
and compassion?
Did he ever think about what it must have been like for us?
(whoosh)
Whoa. Birds.