"Doctor, Doctor!  Please hurry!"
    "Whassup?" Paula mumbled into the telephone.  She looked at the clock.  It was 3 a.m.  She almost began on the "Do you know what time it is?" litany, but thought better of it.  The life of a veterinarian was punctuated by occasional emergencies.
    "Hurry, Doctor, hurry!" insisted the excited voice on the other end of the line.  "She's going to die!"
    "Look," said Paula, "if you'll just settle down and tell me what the problem is, we can get down to fixing it.  Now, who are you, and what's the problem?"
    "I'm Rufus Biggs, Chief Goose Tender," stammered the voice.  "And it's Gertie!"
    "Gertie?"
    "Gertie the Goose!" cried Rufus.
    "So, Gertie's a goose..."
    "Not a goose!" shouted the distraught Rufus.  "The goose!  The goose that lays the golden eggs!"

    The farm was a little bit off the beaten track, but not hard to find.  Paula was greeted by a frantic fellow she took to be Rufus.  He was waving his arms and gesturing toward the front entrance of a large, fenced-in, heavily-guarded facility.
    "I'm Rufus," babbled Rufus redundantly.  "Quick!  She's in here!"
    Inside the building, was stack upon stack of golden eggs, row after row of work stations, each manned (or womanned) by a busy worker.  Each row appeared to be a production line, and there was a one to one relationship between egg stacks and production lines.  Everyone was busy with one task or another:  gathering, sorting, testing, or boxing.
    In the midst of this storm of activity, it was at first difficult for Paula to locate her prospective patient.  But finally, there at the very center, lay a motionless, emaciated goose.  She was surrounded by Egg Gatherers, who seemed to be oblivious to the goose's apparent lack of life.  They coaxed, massaged, stroked, slapped, and, occasionally, kicked the helpless bird.
    "More eggs!  More eggs!" they cajoled.
    "Back off!" barked Paula.  "This fowl is in cardiac arrest!"
    "No time!  No time!" they chanted.  "Gotta get those eggs!"
    Paula elbowed, kicked, pushed, and otherwise drove the Egg Gatherers away from the comatose bird.  She applied mouth-to-beak, and Gertie gave an encouraging honk. When she hooked up an intravenous drip to the wing, the goose perked up noticeably.  Then the vet took some time for a more thorough examination.
    "This goose is starving to death!" she exclaimed.  "When did you last feed her?"
    The Egg Gatherers stared at her dumbly.
    "Uh, it's not their job," interjected the Chief Goose Tender.
    "Then whose job is it?" asked Paula.
    "We don't feed her," replied Rufus with a touch of evasion.
    "Then who does?" persisted Paula.
    "Um, no one," said Rufus.
    Paula was dumbfounded.  "Why on earth not?" she screeched at last.
    "It interferes with production," said Rufus.  "This is a golden egg company.  We have to keep those golden eggs rolling!"
    "Rufus," said Paula, as if to a child, "if you don't feed her, she's going to die.  Then you won't have any golden eggs."
    "Oh, no no no!" corrected Rufus.  "She didn't die.  You came in and revived her."
    Paula was having difficulty finding words.  "Well, aren't you lucky?" she managed at last.  "You know, there's a perfectly simple solution to this.  Just feed her regularly, and you won't have to worry about crises like this."
    "No, we can't do that," insisted Rufus.  "We would never be able to shut production down for that long."
    "Well, why don't you feed her during production?" suggested Paula.
    "No good," insisted Rufus.  "Too much beak O/C."
    "Uh, pardon my ignorance," said Paula, "but what is 'beak O/C?'"
    "Beak Openings and Closings," said Rufus.  "We've determined that detracts from egg laying.  If the beak is going, you don't have the ol' egg producing apparatus going, you know."
    "Never the less," persisted Paula, "if you don't feed her, you're going to continue to have crises like this."
    "Yes," said Rufus.
    "What do you mean, 'yes?'"
    "Affirmative, correct, right, or true," said Rufus.
    "I know what 'yes' means," screamed Paula, momentarily losing her temper.  "What I don't understand is your most recent use of it!"
    "I mean, yes, we know there will be crises like this one.  That's preferable to feeding the goose and cutting into valuable production time."
    "But this is painful, stressful, and dangerous," Paula pointed out.  "And it also eats production time."
    "But it's only once in a while," Rufus rebutted.  "Not every day, like feeding.  Yeah, it's a little stressful, but then it's over, and we don't have to worry about it until the next time."
    Paula put one hand on each of Rufus's shoulders, brought her face to within an inch of his, and spoke very slowly.  "She's going to die, you know."
    "Oh, no," repeated Rufus.  "She didn't die.  Every time this happens, all we have to do is call you in to give her a little goose.  Ha, ha."  Rufus's laugh was curiously devoid of humor.
    "Rufus," said Paula, "I won't come back.  I will not participate in this stupidity."
    "Oh, you won't?" said Rufus without much concern.  "Too bad."
    He pulled out a dog-eared telephone directory that fell effortlessly open to the "veterinarians" section of the yellow pages.  At the bottom of a long list of crossed-out vets, Rufus drew a line through Paula's name.