Goosed into Action

[shanmonster]

Damnit, Shan! Just pick a place in the story and start writing! You can always stick things together in the right order later on.

...

In better news, my lungs no longer feel like they're caught in a vice grip. They're still not good, but they are definitely better. Is it the weather? Is it the steroids? I don't care which, as long as the improvement continues.

I'm dressed oddly today: navy business skort, long messy hair, and f00dave's dove grey Kiev Hard Rock Marijuana Café t-shirt. This is a bizarre look, for sure. It confused snowy_kathryn. It confuses me. But it's definitely comfy.

...

I recently posted about the geese at the local park. It looks like the geese will be no more, thanks to people's fear of poop. This article pisses me off a lot. The geese, which are currently unable to fly because of moulting, are about to be victimized by a systemic harassment. They'll be chased by "specially trained" dogs, set upon at night by people with laser pointers, and generally chased and tormented. Why? Because there's poop in the pond and along the waterways, and it looks and smells yucky, and parks are for people, not birds, damnit! And parks unpopulated by wildlife are better for property values, apparently.

This is notwithstanding the signs which say that anyone caught molesting the birds can expect to pay fines or serve a jail sentence. So what suddenly makes this wildlife protection rule so inconvenient? The fact that geese can't be toilet trained?

The geese, by the way, don't bother hanging out in places like the playground and don't stray far into the field where people picnic and play soccer, but keep to the water areas, or the near end of the field where they keep the grass neatly cropped. The lawns are greener for the attention, too. People might not like goose poop, but plants do.

If you don't like the look, sound, and smell of animals, don't live near them, and walk elsewhere in the park. Sheesh.

I'm of half a mind to dress up as a giant goose in a cape and hang out at the park at nights avenging the geese.

Comments

[ltmurnau.livejournal.com]

I'm of half a mind to dress up as a giant goose in a cape and hang out at the park at nights avenging the geese.


And I'm of half a mind to pay to see that!

[mysteryelfx.livejournal.com]

Sorry about the OT post here, but what's up with your Omphalo-Stepses (or however you spell that) website? And what would it take to get it back up online?

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

Hardware issues. The server is still in pieces. Something about a partition or something? I'm really hoping it will be back up again soon. It's been about a month and a half, and I grow increasingly antsy.

[sidruid.livejournal.com]

I waited for this to drift back a day or so before commenting...
Perhaps the situation is different for the geese near you as they are a native population. They are not native residents of the Eastern Mid-Atlantic states. Rather, they are migrating fowl that stop over and occasionally winter.

As lawns have spread, food become more available, predators less available and there has been an increase in sentimentality* toward them, the geese have taken up permanent residence. They are unwelcome guests for all the reasons you can imagine (noise, poo, chasing kids, displacing native populations, etc), but because they are classified as migratory fowl they cannot be hunted or trapped. Or, in other words, that natural population controls destroyed by people cannot be replaced with artificial approximations.

People here use dogs and licensed human harassers to encourage the geese not to take up residence, but that is effectively only in making them someone else's problem. I do not know the effectiveness of contraception, but if it is anything like white tailed deer contraception, it's not effective for population control.

The only effective natural means of population control are: Starvation (/Habitat Loss), Disease, and Predation. That goes for any species, so unless one of those steps will be taken, the problem will merely move around -- it won't be corrected.

[sidruid.livejournal.com]

* - sentimentality: I.e. Bambi is cute but a buzzard is not. All animals deserve to live, and other such flawed notions. Nature, red in tooth and claw, is the way it works. If we want to save and protect animals, we need to do so by the laws that govern them, not the ones we've invented.

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

I don't really see any evidence that there is an overpopulation problem. The ducks and swans seem to coexist with them peacefully, and they appear healthy and vibrant. And there are fewer geese in the park this year than there were last year.

I'm sure hunting season will cull the gaggles even more. I must say, those geese look pretty darned tasty.

If there's an overpopulation problem, it's with the human, IMO. We've spread out into critter country, and are getting our knickers in a twist when the animals don't play by people rules.

[sidruid.livejournal.com]

Perhaps those geese from your park are now living in mine. Growing up, I saw very few canada geese at all, these days any patch of grass large enough to host a baseball field will have geese. Most fields are situated nearby more densely populated human areas, and as such they are too close to allow hunting. They may look tasty, but we can't eat them and we don't have enough fox left to hunt for us. Fortunately, our coyote population is increasing (available food source).

The geese are very territorial (they'll take on a car), while your ducks may get along with them, here they'll clear a pond of ducks. The surest way to keep them off the water is to put fake swans out (the swans will attack anything, and they grow to enormous sizes).

The trouble with an invasive species like the canada goose is that it unpredictably unbalances an ecosystem. One of the biggest problems with them is that they feathers clog water cycling systems and water run-off through a poo field picks up the excess nitrogen. The result is an algae bloom and reduced oxidation of the water. Thus, the fish and invertebrates die, which causes reptiles and amphibians migrate away from the pond due to lack of food.