The states of New York, Michigan and Minnesota are braving the wrath of environmentalists and launching programs to kill urban geese.
Canada geese adapt well to urban living where there is a waterway. They raise their young and the young raise their young ad infinitum. Soon you can’t put your foot down in a park or golf course without getting it plastered with goose splattings.
The birds get so tame that they don’t even look up when a frisbee or a golf ball goes whistling by.
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American local authorities say parks are for people, not geese. Hired assassins are skulking around at night, capturing the sleepy honkers. The breast meat is ground up for gooseburgers. To salve consciences, the meat is donated to food banks.
Those who oppose taking any life, even that of a goose, have attempted to head off the slaughter by pointing out that these geese have been eating golf-course grass that is polluted with herbicides. To give goose meat to a food bank, they say, would expose the poor to these chemical additives.
This argument would be scary if it wasn’t for the fact that geese are thriving on treated grass and goodies fed to them by city kids.
Perhaps the population boom among geese will be followed up by a similar expansion of families depending on the food bank.
The Americans first tried scare cannons and nest-robbing, so now it’s capital punishment. We’ll watch to see if this really does reduce the goose presence. Somehow, I believe the geese will figure out a way elude the midnight marauders and continue city living.
