Posted on 07/01/2002 7:14:57 PM PDT by aculeus
Ottawa — As neighbours go, they can be downright un-Canadian — honking rudely at strangers, huffing about having to share space, thoughtlessly leaving their crap lying around.
Good looks only get you so far when you're a goose, and in the United States, the locals have had it with the boorish habits of the white-cheeked species that bears the name of their neighbour to the north. From New York to Seattle, they're debating a lethal eviction of unprecedented proportion; in some cities, the gas chambers have already dispatched unlucky gaggles, sometimes even serving the birds up at soup kitchens.
The Canada goose, our elegant, high-flying national icon, has become the dirty pigeon of fine American neighbourhoods, the permanent resident they can't deport.
"It's a cesspool," said Raymond Petronko, a councillor in the borough of South Plainfield, where Spring Lake Park is home to 1,000 Canada geese and all the droppings that come with them. "They're in our football fields so when kids get tackled, they get geese stuff in their helmets. They want to live in the same living space humans do. But human beings use a toilet."
In New Jersey, where the density of Canada geese has human residents most desperate — there are four geese for every square kilometre — the state has gassed 10,000 of them, 10 times more than in 2000. At the Kansas City Zoo, they've been snuffing them on quiet days and sending them to a slaughterhouse. The meat often ends up being used to feed the homeless.
The goose-poop epidemic has launched a cottage industry of innovation. There's the "Goosebuster," which uses recorded honks to scare off newcomers, and the dead duck decoy, designed to fool fowl into believing danger lurks in their chosen lake.
Cities have brought in border collies equipped with life jackets to chase them down and fake alligators to scare them off — with mixed results.
The Canada goose still has a passionate, if small, following of animal-rights supporters, who argue that killing the geese is a lazy, inhumane solution that works only in the short term.
Countering fears of E. coli, activists insist that the droppings from grass-eating geese pose no serious health risks. At protests, they wave signs that read: "Defecation is no grounds for the death penalty." And in Seattle last week, a man was arrested for allegedly causing an accident with a wildlife agent's truck, while trying to stop another goose-gassing.
"Wildlife does not know property boundaries," said David Feld, the president of Geese Peace, a non-profit oganization that says it can successfully reduce the goose population with tactics such as "oiling" the eggs to stop them from hatching, and growing tall grass to make the habitats less inviting. He argues that the geese, who favour well-manicured lawns, can be moved to areas where they will not bother humans. "The solution of killing something is not a reasonable answer. The geese can fit in," Mr. Feld says.
Even so, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is currently considering changes to a long-standing law that prevents the killing of the Canada goose outside of hunting season and without a special permit. Culling the flock — which experts estimate can grow 10 per cent a year — may be the only answer, Mr. Petronko suggests reluctantly.
His voters enjoy seeing the geese, he said, but worry more about their children playing in the feces. On a hot day, the local lake stinks with the smell of droppings. The geese have even found the retaining pool that volunteer firefighters in his county use to train, so they get a face full of spoiled, pungent water when they work the hoses.
"Normal people do not want to kill living things," Mr. Petronko said. "But we have an imbalance."
The booming Canada goose population is not only a U.S. problem; some Canadian golf courses and parks are also trying to keep the feces count down with humane methods.
And for Canadians who are ready to rise up in defence of our national symbols, it bears noting that the geese causing the big headaches for U.S. park users and golfers are mainly Canadian in name only. The majority of these flocks have never even passed through a Canadian sky, choosing instead to abandon cross-border migration for the comforts of a nice lake and a mild winter.
"[Some people] think these are your geese coming down and causing problems," said Mr. Feld. But they are, for the most part, 100 per cent American-made."
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How about injuring people then? We've had several people pretty badly injured in attacks by these geese. They're not little, and they can put a serious hurting on you if they decide to.
Our cougars are more interested in small children than geese.
Here in Maryland, I wish I could feed the geese to the cougars, grizzlies and coyotes, but we have none. The homeless and the welfare families aren't interested in eating them. The foxes that haven't gotten rabies from the racoons would rather eat the rabbits that are getting to Aussie proportions.
The geese have no enemies, unfortunately.
We had tons of rabbits in our parks a few years ago because of people giving up their pets. That's why the coyotes moved in. But now that they've depleted the bunny population they've discovered that our pet cats are just as tasty. I see a coyote running around in my neighbourhood every few weeks. To a lesser degree, eagles also like our cats.
If you have a problem with geese on your property, get a dead Canada goose decoy. I've read that they're pretty effective at keeping the live ones far away.
A sign on an old butcher shop in my town;
"We live to kill, we kill to live"
a century ago
Sure were fun to hunt though. (I was hunting wild ones, not the tame ones on the golf courses.)
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