of 1955 he had sent an even dozen of letters to the Department of Agriculture requesting information on the hatching of goose eggs. The department sent him all the booklets on hand that were anywhere near the subject, but his letters simply got more impassioned and freer in their references to his 'friend,' the local congressman.
My connection with this is that I am in the employ of the Department of Agriculture. Since I was attending a convention at San Antonio in July of 1955, my boss asked me to stop off at MacGregor's place and see what I could do to help him. We're servants of the public and besides we had finally received a letter from MacGregor's congressman.
On July 17,1955, I met The Goose.
I met MacGregor first. He was in his fifties, a tall man with a lined face full of suspicion. I went over all the information he had been given, then asked politely if I might see his geese. He said, 'Its not geese, mister; it's one goose.'
I said, 'May I see the one goose?'
'Rather not.'
'Well, then, I can't help you any further. If it's only one goose, then there's just something wrong with it. Why worry about one goose? Eat it.'
I got up and reached for my hat.
He said, 'Wait!' and I stood there while his lips tightened and his eyes wrinkled and he had a quiet fight with himself. 'Come with me.'
I went out with him to a pen near the house, surrounded by barbed wire, and a locked gate to it, and holding one goose-The Goose.
That's The Goose,' he said. The way he said it, I could hear the capitals.
I stared at it. It looked like any other goose, fat, self-satisfied, and short-tempered.
MacGregor said, 'And here's one of its eggs. It's been in the incubator. Nothing happens.' He produced it from a capacious overall pocket. There was a queer strain about his manner of holding it.
I frowned. There was something wrong with the egg. It was smaller and more spherical than normal. MacGregor said, Take it.'
I reached out and took it. Or tried to. I gave it the amount of heft an egg like that ought to deserve and it just sat where it was. I had to try harder and then up it came.
Now I knew what was queer about the way MacGregor held it. It weighed nearly two pounds.
I stared at it as it lay there, pressing down the palm of my hand, and MacGregor grinned sourly. 'Drop it,' he said.
I just looked at him, so he took it out of my hand and dropped it himself.
It hit soggy. It didn't smash. There was no spray of white and yolk. It just lay where it fell with the bottom caved in.
I picked it up again. The white eggshell had shattered where the egg had struck. Pieces of it had naked away and what shone through was a dull yellow in color. My hands trembled. It was all I could do to make my fingers work, but I got some of the rest of the shell flaked away, and stared at the yellow.
I didn't have to run any analyses. My heart told me.
I was face to face with The Goose!
The Goose That Laid The Golden Eggs! My first problem was to get MacGregor to give up that golden egg. I was almost hysterical about it.
I said, 'I'll give you a receipt. I'll guarantee you payment. I'll do anything in reason.'
'I don't want the government butting in,' he said stubbornly.
But I was twice as stubborn and in the end I signed a receipt and he dogged me out to my car and stood in the road as I drove away, following me with his eyes.
The head of my section at the Department of Agriculture is Louis P. Bronstein. He and I are on good terms and I felt I could explain things without being placed under immediate observation. Even so, I took no chances. I had the egg with me and when I got to the tricky part, I just laid it on the desk between us.
I said, 'It's a yellow metal and it could be brass only it isn't because it's inert to concentrated nitric acid.' Bronstein said, 'It's some sort of hoax. It must be.'
'A hoax that uses real gold? Remember, when I first saw this thing, it was covered completely with authentic unbroken eggshell. It's been easy to check a piece of the egg shell. Calcium carbonate.'
Project Goose was started. That