Ducks and geese.

     We saw a magnificent hawk soaring directly above our heads when we first entered the Chicago Botanic Garden Sunday. For a moment I thought it might be an eagle — it was that big, and seemed to have a white head. But then I saw the distinctive brown markings on its wings. A hawk.

     Soon we were debating whether certain birds far in the distance on the water were ducks, or geese.
     We walked. A thought grew.
     "Do you know..." I began, "that, in nature, there is a strict ratio for ducks and geese?"
     My wife chewed on that a moment.
     "Is this the set-up to a joke?" she asked.
     Damn. Busted. I used to be so good at this. I told her that, yes, it was. Then I told her what the joke would have been, had she not ruined it. She admired its primitive beauty.
     "I should have let you play it out," she said, regretfully.
     "Yeah."
     But my wife, like a skilled jazz musician, picked up the refrain of the thwarted joke and riffed upon it anyway.
     "Because then, you could have said, 'I learned about it in nursery school," she continued.
     I didn't immediately see where she was going with this.
     "And then I would be impressed that you still remember it, after all these years."
     I nodded, realization dawning.
     "And you would say, 'The ratio is very simple. It goes, 'Duck. Duck. Goose.' Then repeats."
      I know I'll be living to tell it to someone someday. Or you are free to use it as your own on some future occasion.
     Assuming there is anyone else in the world who might want to.
     Which there probably isn't. We are a particularly well-suited couple, having grown into each other like a pair of old oaks leaning against each other.

     On Monday, we were back in the garden — we go there a lot. We found ourselves standing before a mixed group of ducks and geese. Mostly the latter.

     "You're wrong," she observed.

     I knew exactly what she was talking about.