How they got their wings

Carol Muzik calls Lucy’s May 2004 appearance a gift.

Muzik was inside her Rockford Bay home overlooking Lake Coeur d’Alene when she heard husband, Nick, calling from outside.

” ‘Carol, come outside but leave the dogs inside.’ There in his hands was this little gosling,” she said.

So began a nine-month journey in which the Muziks protected Lucy from predators, encouraged her to socialize with other geese and taught her to fly beside their powerboat.

Lucy’s story is now told in the award-winning short film “Raising Lucy,” produced by Carol Muzik and local filmmaker Chad Christensen.

“Raising Lucy” recently won best documentary honors at the Charleston International Film Festival and has been entered in several more film festivals taking place later this year.

Carol Muzik, 54, describes the nine months she cared for the gosling as “birthing Lucy into the wild.”

But it was Muzik herself who was reborn.

Caring for Lucy gave her the courage to leave her job as a nurse to pursue her passion for art and to open up a heart she had been protecting from the hurt of never having a child.

Muzik was Lucy’s mother. Lucy gave Muzik renewed purpose.

As Lucy grew from downy, golden gosling to silver and black-feathered beauty, Muzik’s world expanded across the lake and then across the country.

Lucy spread her wings and gave flight to Muzik’s dreams.

“I was glad to see her get out of her job and to see her take the leap to do something different,” said Nick Muzik. “The goose was a new life. Hers was a new life.”

An early photo of Lucy shows the tiny gosling looking up with complete trust. It’s a responsibility the Muziks took seriously from day one.

When told by Idaho Fish and Game employees that it would be illegal to keep Lucy, Carol Muzik tried to leave the newborn gosling in Lake Coeur d’Alene.

“Over flies a red-tailed hawk and there was no way. I brought her home,” Muzik said.

So the Muziks rolled up their carpets to protect them from gosling poop and bought Lucy a wading pool. They took her for rides on their kayaks and swims in the lake with their two dogs. They taught her to fly by encouraging her to follow them in their powerboat.

“I always wanted her to know she was a goose,” Carol Muzik said.

“They almost had a full-time job teaching her to be a wild goose,” said Idaho Fish and Game wildlife biologist Carrie Hugo.

Though raising a wild goose like Lucy is against the law, Hugo said she understands the Muziks’ decision to protect the gosling. And she said by teaching Lucy to fly and introducing her to other geese they did their best for her.

“Even though they loved Lucy, they always wanted her to be wild,” Hugo said.

And all the while Carol Muzik was the doting mother, photographing and filming Lucy’s swims and flights.

It was one of those photos, on display at Muzik’s former Harrison gallery, which caught the eye of filmmaker Chad Christensen. In the shot from behind, a gangly Lucy, wings outstretched, races toward the lake with one of the Muziks’ two dogs.

“I thought, there’s a story there,” Christensen said.

Carol Muzik showed Christensen her movie, but he encouraged her to work with him and his company, Chair Films, to expand the story.

“Lucy is the front story,” he said. “But it’s also about Carol taking flight. The beauty of it was the joy she felt being around Lucy and the gift that was.”

But while human children take decades to grow and leave the nest, Lucy was fully grown in two months and ready to join her fellow geese at nine months.

A teary Muzik recently described how Lucy spent increasing amounts of time away from home, until one day she was gone for 24 hours and then in March 2005 Lucy left with a mate.

So Muzik threw her energy into her gallery and art and caring for her dying mother who moved into the guest house behind the Muzik home. She wondered what had happened to Lucy.

On Feb. 27, Muzik’s mother died. The family was gathered at the house when Nick and Carol Muzik’s brother-in-law called up from the beach.

A goose was honking at a sailboat buoy. It was swimming back and forth and honking, honking, honking.

It was Lucy.

Then the day after Muzik’s mother’s memorial service, Lucy made another visit.

“I feel like she’s a gift from God,” Muzik said. “Coming back that way was symbolic of both her and my mom finding their true homes.”

And Lucy’s impact continues today. Muzik is taking her story to more film festivals and into schools. She’s still creating Lucy-inspired art.

“Lucy will always be with me,” Muzik said. “She gave me my own wings.”