Young homeowners are hunting porch geese, that 1980s Midwestern trend

Melanie Priehs says her job as a part-time concrete artist kind of “fell into her lap” in 2019, when she purchased a neglected statuary in Michigan and began learning how to use the various molds and equipment to make animals and other figures.

In the last couple of years, sales of one animal have gone through the roof: Everybody wants a goose.

Life-size decorative goose statues for the lawn, garden or porch aren’t a new idea; they were popular in the 1980s, particularly in the Midwest. Now they’re making a big comeback as younger people flock to the trend, possibly as an antidote to uncertain times.

“It’s a kind of escape from everything we’re dealing with every day, everything in the news cycle,” said Heather Hintz, the head of e-commerce at Gaggleville, a subsidiary of Midwest retailer Miles Kimball, which has advertised the geese in its catalog for decades. “This is just something that brightens people’s day.”

Some have inherited geese from elderly relatives, while others buy them new from local concrete artists like Priehs. A plastic blow-mold version is available from Gaggleville.

It’s not just a matter of parking a plain goose in front of your home; a big part of the trend includes dressing the birds. A quick online search turns up thousands of photos and videos on social media, with geese dressed in an array of costumes and seasonal attire.

“We talk all day long in our team’s chat about who said something about porch geese on social media, or what we saw on TikTok,” Hintz said. “It’s something new almost every hour. You can’t even keep up with it.”

The exact origins of the goose lawn ornament are murky at best.

By some reports, they first appeared around the middle of the 20th century, “supposedly in the upper Ohio River Valley,” said Carla Bruni, a preservation and resiliency specialist at the Chicago Bungalow Association. By the 1980s, the geese had spread throughout the Midwest, with a particularly strong presence in Chicago.

Wherever it began, Bruni suspects the practice of putting a goose statue outside a home is rooted in symbolism.

In some religions, geese symbolize loyalty and morality — themes also associated with the growth of American suburbs dominated by single-family homes.

“This is my guess about how it started,” Bruni said. “You’ll see old advertisements that emphasize morality among single-family homeowners. Morality and homeownership have gone hand in hand since the turn of the last century.”

There may be other symbolism behind porch geese. Legend has it that in 387 B.C., when invading Gauls tried to overtake the Roman army in the middle of the night, a flock of geese honked and woke the sleeping troops.

“Pliny the Elder credits geese with saving Rome,” Bruni said.

In fact, modern farmers and chicken owners often use geese as deterrents, both for their ability to raise an alarm and their willingness to attack.

“They are pretty fierce,” Bruni added. “The statues may be a symbol of the goose protecting the house.”

But by the time the craze peaked in the 1980s, the average porch goose was anything but intimidating. Erika Gross recalls the concrete goose on the porch of her grandma’s Ohio home and its large (and adorable) wardrobe.

When Gross bought her first house in 2022, she joked that it “wouldn’t feel like a home” without a goose statue on the porch. Her aunt found one for her at a garage sale, and Gross, 30, started a Facebook group called the Porch Goose Club of America to share tongue-in-cheek posts and photos of her goose and its outfits. Now it’s a thriving online community of more than 200,000 where users compete for the title of porch goose of the month.

“People go all out,” Gross said. “They’ve got props and they’ve got backgrounds. You’re not going to compete if you just put an outfit on your goose.”

There’s no shortage of Etsy sellers marketing porch-goose-size clothing, and Gaggleville sells outfits for every season and holiday.

“Our yellow raincoat outfit is extremely popular,” Hintz said. Another big seller is the gardener outfit, which features a tiny straw hat, a shovel and a flowerpot.

Others get even more creative: Allison Roddy, a 35-year-old from Philadelphia, bought a sewing machine last fall that she uses to craft attire for her goose, including a Christmas cloak and bonnet made from thrift store fabric. In the run-up to the Eagles’ Super Bowl win, Roddy’s goose was draped in a homemade jersey that read “GO BIRDS.” She dressed it in a custom pink cape for Valentine’s Day.

Hannah Tindle, 30, sends photos of her two porch geese in Oklahoma to a family group chat each time the statues change clothes. Her first goose was the plastic version from Gaggleville. Now she’s added another, with a more unconventional background.

“He’s actually a retired decoy I got on eBay,” she said. “I’m giving him a second shot at life, because hunting was probably not very fun for him. I tell people I redeemed him from a dark past.”

Roddy says the porch goose trend is fueled by its innate positivity.

“Things are pretty bleak out there,” she said. “This is a way for us to just laugh at ourselves and maybe not take ourselves so seriously. I think millennials are coming into our own; we’re done with the ‘millennial gray,’ and now we want whimsy and dressed-up porch geese.”