For three weeks Robert had been waking up to the strange sight of a goose standing in his backyard. He would wake up at 9 a.m., walk downstairs to his kitchen and when he looked out of the window above the sink that looked out on the backyard and would see the goose, standing perfectly still at the centre of the small lawn behind his house and looking through the kitchen window. The goose stood and stared through the window with unwavering focus until it flew away at exactly twelve noon. Robert did nothing to provoke the goose as he was certain he knew what it had come for.

Robert woke up at nine o'clock in the morning because he didn't have a job, he didn't need to work because for the past four years he had been excreting a solid gold egg once every six months. These eggs he was able to sell for $100 000 each, allowing him to live a life of comfort and leisure. The first egg that he'd laid had caused him immeasurable anxiety. He had sat down on the toilet for what he had thought would be an entirely normal excretion and what had felt like an entirely normal excretion until he heard a loud crack from beneath him that sent him flying off of the toilet seat. Upon determining that the coast was clear he'd crawled across the bathroom floor on his elbows and peered over the toilet rim and saw a gold egg resting at the bottom of the bowl. Using a pair of plastic gloves that he retrieved from the kitchen he reached into the toilet and extracted the egg. The egg was so heavy that he needed to use two hands to lift it. He didn't sleep that night, and for days after he was only able to sleep fitfully. He kept the egg in his sock drawer, unable to decide what to do with it. After excreting the egg there was nothing in his life that changed, no other supernatural events occurred to make him believe that his excretion of a gold egg was part of a much larger series of strange events. He took the egg to be appraised and was told that it was worth upwards of $90 000. Suspicious of the egg and wanting to be rid of it he agreed to sell it and thought that he was done with excreting golden eggs until six months later when he heard another loud crack underneath him when he was on the toilet. He sold that egg too and with $200 000 in his bank account he quit his job and started thinking that perhaps the golden eggs were a miracle.

He'd gleefully quit his job as a tax accountant and settled very quickly into a life of watching TV, surfing the internet, reading, trying his hand at writing and staying up until the early hours of the morning. He turned out not to have any talent for writing and quickly gave it up. He was single and lived alone, and had put on a considerable amount of weight from eating take-out every day that he had delivered to his house. The money from the eggs had caused him to slip into a deep apathy that he couldn't see himself getting out of until the goose started appearing in his backyard. He thought that eventually the goose would get tired of waiting for whatever it was waiting for and go away and never come back, but every morning it was there, staring through his kitchen window. One morning he tried to intimidate the goose into leaving by staring into its eyes but he was the one who ended up averting his eyes. The goose had stared back into his eyes with what he came to feel was intense and dangerous menace and if he didn't look away from it the goose was going to use its mystical powers to fire something out of its eyes in his direction. He tried ignoring the goose. He kept the curtains above the sink closed in the morning and didn't look through them to see if the goose was still there. He couldn't ignore it, he knew without looking that the goose was there, waiting for him. Watching television wasn't much of a distraction, all they were talking about on the news was the escalating hostilities between Iran and Israel. The whole world was going up in flames, and hearing about it and seeing images of it was not preferable to speculating about the goose.

Robert was busy ignoring the goose when he heard a commotion in his backyard. He ran from the living room into the kitchen, looked through the curtains above the sink and saw two well dressed men in the backyard attempting to capture the goose. Robert watched as the two men did everything within their power to capture the goose but were outwitted every time. Try as they might they couldn't lay a finger of the goose. The goose's evasive skill was a marvel to behold; when one of the men tried to come at it from above it quickly stepped to the side, when one of them tried coming at it from behind it quickly jumped out of the way, and when the two men tried to double up on it the goose moved in such a way that they went crashing into each other. It was as if the goose possessed telepathic abilities that were letting it know exactly what it needed to do to evade the men's attempts at capturing it. Robert decided that he had seen enough, there was clearly something very special about that goose and he wasn't going to allow those men, whoever they were, to take it away without him learning what it wanted with him.

"Hey! Get away from my goose!" He ran into the backyard and yelled at the men.

Recognizing the opportunity that it had been presented with the goose jumped on one of the men's heads, shat on it, and scuttled into the kitchen, with Robert following closely behind. Robert only realized it when he was back in the house, but the two men had looked like mob types, not the sort of people one wanted to get mixed up with. Following the ordeal in the backyard the goose was remarkably calm. It felt entirely at home in Robert's kitchen and thought nothing of hopping up on the kitchen table. Robert regarded the goose warily, there was no telling what great power was contained within it.

"Can I get you anything?" Robert asked the goose.

"Quack quack quack."

To his astonishment Robert understood what the goose had said to him. It had complained about feeling thirsty and asked if it could have some water. Robert went to the sink, filled a bowl with water from the tap and set it down before the goose, who drank from the bowl without getting a drop on the table.

"Thank you, that was most refreshing," the goose said when it was done drinking.

"Were those mobsters that were trying to capture you?"

"Yes, from the Missucci family. I knew when I started coming here that I was putting myself at risk but I had to come and see you."

"It is. I know that you've been selling them, that's not a problem, but you need to keep the next one, it's special."

"What's so special about it?"

"You'll see when you lay it, which should be two weeks from now, I'll be back to speak with you then."

"You're leaving?"

"I need to report back that I've made contact with you."

"Who are you reporting to?"

"I can't tell you that yet, we need to be certain of your reliability first. Now, if you would be so kind as to open the door for me please."

"I could drive you to where you're going, those mobsters might still be around."

"Once I'm in the air I'll be fine. They might come back for you, so you be careful."

Robert opened the kitchen door for the goose and it waddled outside and took off into the sky. As soon as the goose was out of sight Robert drank a half a bottle of scotch in one sip and went back to bed, the strangeness of what he had just experienced was too much for him to process just then. When he woke up later that afternoon he was still shaken by the fact that earlier he had been communicating with a goose. He shouldn't have been as shaken as he was, after all, he had been shitting golden eggs for three years. More alarming was the goose's warning for him to be on the lookout for mobsters that may be after him. The Missucci family was the most powerful mob family in all of New York, having over the past five years acquired more power than any mob family had been able to acquire since before Giuliani came along. What on earth a gang wanted with a goose was a mystery, one of many mysteries Robert was certain were soon going to be central to his life without any certainty that he was going to obtain any answers.