FAT GOOSE AUCTION
The Annual Fat Goose Auction is held annually, every year. And so every year, on the day, Mr. Fredrick’s usually-quiet farm becomes an unusually loud one, filled with the honking of fat geese.
There’s honking of a different sort present here too. Honking of the buyers and sellers of said fat geese. The fatter the goose, the higher the bid. Some of the more grotesquely fat geese on display can sell for upwards of five-hundred dollars. Really. You see, buyers come willing to spend and sellers bring their fattest geese.
These geese aren’t for eating. No, no, no. These are show geese. Fat show geese. They’re for showing off. These geese are for bragging about. Whomsoever walks out of this year’s auction with the fattest goose will have just that: the year’s fattest goose, which really is something to brag about.
These bragging rights are expensive ones but always well worth it. Do you want instant respect around town? Do you desire overnight fame and regional acclaim? Are you interested in selling five-dollar photo ops with your goose? Well, you better have a fat goose. In fact, it had better be the fattest goose your money can buy. And you better be well-prepared to keep that goose nice and fat year-round so that it’s nice and fat and round at next year’s Annual Fat Goose Auction, where it will help decide the winner of that year’s prestigious Annual Fattest Goose Award.
No goose ever wins twice in a row, by the way, no matter how fat they are. This is one of many, many rules about the AFGA that one must commit to memory if one hopes to ever buy or sell fat geese at an auction. One has to pass a quiz on these rules to even attend the event.
Children under the age of twelve or under the weight of the fattest goose do not have to take this quiz to attend. Their admission to the auction is also free. They are, however, discouraged from touching the fat geese and are strictly forbidden from purchasing or selling of said fat geese. The only reason to attend such an event as a child (or person whose weight is less than that of the fattest goose) would be to accompany a person of either the selling or buying variety, who, in most cases, knows better than to bring a child (or PWWILTTOTFG) along in the first place.
Children or no, it is worth noting that geese, especially such weighty ones, can be quite aggressive. This trait is slowly being bred out of these geese. Over the past hundred-and-fifty years of the AFGA, the winning geese have often been the more docile ones, given that they are often also the fattest geese. This fact should bring you a sense of melancholic comfort, though comfortable melancholy is an equally acceptable reaction.
Since you asked, muscles do not, and will never, count toward a goose’s weight. A desirable goose is fat, not strong. A lean diet and plenty of exercise can get one a hefty goose. Anybody can groom a hefty goose. Only the most patient and committed of sellers can come to the show with a well-and-truly fat goose.
Now before you get too excited I’ll have you know that goose trading is strictly prohibited. There is no direct one-for-one trading of fat geese allowed. This means that if a person had a fat goose for sale you wished to purchase, you would not be able to acquire it by giving said seller one of your fat geese in return. Does that make sense? Is that clear to you?
A common issue among fat goose sellers is a psychological phenomenon referred to by many as regret. Should I not have sold that fat goose? Could I have gotten more money for that fat goose? I’ve just given away my best friend, a fat goose!
Often the fattest, more desirable geese are raised from birth by their sellers. A person attending an Annual Fat Goose Auction may have a fat goose aged over twenty years when submitted for sale. That’s a long time to spend caring for a fat goose, only to turn around and sell it for a couple of hundred bucks.
Almost makes one wonder why they do it.