I also have a personal gold reserve, recently molded onto a lower left molar. It’s pretty far back, so you won’t see it in even the widest of smiles. A sudden, wide-mouthed sneeze might reveal it, but of course I’d never inflict you with that. My mother trained me to cover my mouth, and I’ve recently been further instructed by young Bradon Pullyblank. He learned a good sneeze technique, among many other useful things, at Brookwood’s pre-school.

The technique applies to a sneeze that sneaks up on you, is about to explode before you can drag out a handkerchief. Bradon’s directive is, "Sneeze into your sleeve, please!" I take it that, if someone fails to do so at Brookwood, scores of tots chant that command reprovingly.

Good for Brookwood, and good for Bradon! Both have me burying my nose in my elbow if a sneeze catches me unawares. I’m hoping, though, that the school also teaches kids a follow-up to, "Sneeze into your sleeve, please." I hope they also chant, "No wiping your nose, though!"

But back to my tooth. The new crown, expertly placed by Dr. Paul Weber, is the first gold deposit in my personal repository. Lots of silver fillings in my mouth since I first leaned back and opened wide. But despite accumulated silver, no gold was stashed in there till last month. That’s when Paul Weber did his skillful work.

I sat in his waiting room with real anticipation, even as I thumbed through a December 2006 Smithsonian. (Paul won’t abide old magazines on his office. You’ll never sit reading about Sputnik or Elvis’ funeral.) But I was stopped in mid-thumbing by a full-page photo of an admired author, Paul Theroux, in company with two large fowl. The article’s title hooked me: "Living with Geese."

If you’ve followed this column for a long time (or read the book), you know I have an unhappy past with geese. I’ve found them belligerent, ungrateful, even insulting creatures, prone to hiss and shriek, and to give bites that raise welts.

Thought of some past experiences will still make me grind my teeth (though perhaps not now, with my gold to protect). I started reading with zest, looking for what Theroux had to say about geese, nature’s mistake.

What a jolt! A lot of the article wasn’t about geese at all. It was an attack on E.B. White, top man in my pantheon of great American essayists. Theroux, whose own work I’ve often enjoyed, was roughing up my idol for sentimentalizing animals and for projecting into them human personalities, human feelings.

White, who did much of his later writing from his New England farm, is a shameless distorter, says Theroux. He is blinded to objective observation of animals by obsessively using himself as touchstone when describing their actions and instincts. [an error occurred while processing this directive]