In 2010, in Dead Horse Bay in Brooklyn in New York City an unlikely trio come together to save geese that are scheduled to be killed.After a plane collides with a flock of geese, forcing it to make an emergency landing in the Hudson River, the local authorities decide to kill all the geese within a 7-mile radius of New York City airports. Tanisha, a twenty-something student at Brooklyn Law School and a member of the activist group Goose Watch, is committed to saving them, a mission she understands will be a challenge. She finds a partner in Marty, a cranky but charming 73-year-old New Yorker who happens to own a sailboat, their means of getting out to Kennedy Airport, the site of the one of the goose kills. Marty is initially unmoved by the birds' plight; he confesses, "I'm not sure that I care for geese." However, he is angry about Kennedy Airport's construction, which led to the destruction of the local environment, a once-vibrant aquatic community (and Marty's "playground" as a child) reduced to a "dead zone." Marty also remembers the disruption that the airport caused at school as the first jets took off from the airport; the jets were so noisy that they drowned out the teachers, starting what became known as jet-stop teaching. Eventually, Marty comes to care for the geese as much as Tanisha, and is inspired to hatch various plans (some of them hilarious) to save them, a dedication that gets him into trouble with the law and links the pair with Don, a former duck hunter now haunted by the death he once caused. Will Marty, Tanisha and Don be able to save the geese?