The Sacred Geese of the Reflecting Pool
On Rome, America, and the one enemy no federal contract can defeat
In 390 BC, the Gauls crept silently up the Capitoline Hill under cover of night, intent on sacking Rome. The guards were asleep. The dogs had failed to bark. The city, it seemed, was finished. Then the sacred geese of Juno's temple began to honk — and Rome was saved.
The Romans did not forget this. Every year thereafter, geese were paraded through the city on silken cushions, honored as guardians of the republic. The dogs who had slept through the invasion were symbolically punished. It was the geese, in the end, who had proved themselves worthy stewards of the sacred center of civilization.
I thought about those geese recently while reading about the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
The reflecting pool, that long mirror of American ideals stretching between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial, has not had an easy century. Built in the 1920s on marshy tidal ground, it spent nearly 90 years slowly sinking. By 2010, it had descended about a foot into the earth.
The Obama administration spent $34 million and two years fixing it. They drove over 2,100 timber pilings into the ground, tore out nearly the entire original structure, installed a new circulation and filtration system, and decreased the depth by six inches. It was a comprehensive, serious renovation.
It lasted about a month before the algae arrived.
The renovation had connected the pool to a nearby tidal basin — guaranteeing the algae could never be fully controlled, since backflow of chemicals would threaten local wildlife. CNN was reporting on the failure before the construction crews had finished packing up. — reported 2012
Now, in 2026, President Trump has announced his own solution: drain the pool, scrub out the algae and goose droppings, paint the basin "American flag blue," and install a state-of-the-art ozone nanobubbler filtration system. The project was originally estimated at $1.8 million. Federal records now put it closer to $13.1 million. A nonprofit has sued to halt it, arguing the blue paint violates historic preservation law. Interior Department staffers have raised questions about the quality of the work.
The geese, one assumes, are watching from a safe distance and making notes.
There is something worth pausing on here, beyond the comedy of federal cost overruns. Rome projected its power outward — roads, legions, aqueducts, conquest. America built a mirror. The reflecting pool does not celebrate victory. It reflects. It asks you to look at the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, the sky, and consider what this republic is supposed to be.
It was the backdrop for Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963. It has witnessed marches, vigils, inaugurations, and protest. It is, in its quiet way, one of the most symbolically loaded pieces of water on earth.
And right now it is drained, painted blue, wrapped in litigation, and a subject of a Truth Social post.
Perhaps that too is a reflection.
The Canada goose — Branta canadensis — is protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. You cannot remove them. You cannot deter them with federal contracts. You cannot tariff them. They do not go through customs. They were at the pool before the Obama renovation. They will be there after the nanobubbler. They have no particular feelings about historic preservation law.
In this they are not so different from Rome's sacred geese. Both are protected by the state. Both are cleaned up after at public expense. Both have outlasted every political figure who tried to impose their vision on the sacred space they inhabit.
The Romans, to their credit, understood what they were dealing with. They put the geese on cushions and gave them a parade. They integrated the birds into the civic religion rather than pretending they could be managed away.
America keeps spending millions on nanobubblers.
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