With dismay, I'm reading "A ‘Quixotic’ Fight to Protect a Bird That Can Be Hard to Love/Two New York men who bonded over bird-watching at the Central Park Reservoir are united in their efforts to save the nests of its resident Canada geese."
Edward Dorson, a wildlife photographer and regular visitor to the reservoir, learned in 2021 that federal workers were destroying the eggs of Canada geese there as part of a government safety program to decrease bird collisions with airplanes. He tried to stop it. He reached out to animal rights organizations and wrote letters to various government agencies. He got nowhere. Then in December, he met Larry Schnapf, a tough-talking environmental lawyer, who spotted Mr. Dorson admiring the birds and introduced himself....
When's the last time a tough-talking lawyer walked up to you and introduced himself?
Mr. Schnapf, 72, is a fast-talking, fast-acting networker who is not afraid to make noise. “I told Ed,” he said, “you’ve got to rattle the bureaucracy. All we’re trying to do is get them to talk to us, so we can come up with a plan.... I don’t see too many people like me who are worried about the geese."
Because people don't want the lakeside festooned with excrement... or the planes crashing. The heroes of this story are the egg-destroying feds.
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47 comments:
Don't trust geese. Geese are ashoes.
I call them Canadian Geese. Canada Goose? Sounds wrong. What about England Pheasant? Or Scotland Terrier?
And yes, they are a nuisance. Of course, we've to blame for giving them so much grass and water to partake of. Seems like destroying their nests is a better alternative than killing them wholesale.
So what you do is herd a couple dozen of those honking, obnoxious leg nippers into the NYT main lobby, and then barricade the door.
BTW, once I read that "Ed" was a "fast-talker and fast acting networker" who "Wasn't afraid to make noise" I knew he wasn't a Republican.
Let me guess- Ed's a Democrat and this is all Trump's fault.
If life gives you Canada Geese, make Foie gras out of it.
Not OK to break eggs of Canada geese. OK for Congress to give money to Planned Parenthood to kill humans. OK for judges to insist that the latter continue. I got it now...
Wind turbines, Green blight, green virtues, environmental arbitrage. Bird Lives Matter (BLM)
Ask Grok to write a hardboiled Hammett-esque detective story about saving geese that starts with a tough-talking lawyer introducing himself to the narrator....
JSM
Canadian cheese? How does it compare to Wisconsin cheese? Is the grass greener across the border? Tarrific.
Pigs with wings. Slaughter them all. Kids with air rifles ought to be able to collect a 25 cent bounty on their beaks.
Tom Lehrer, "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park."
Oh Hell Yeah! My favorite fowl. Used to do watercolors of them in HS art and charcoal sketches in College Drawing. My son’s first hunt was for Canada Geeses! Went up north of Dallas and hunted grain field near Lake Texoma and smacked the fool out of them. Lined them up on my tailgate stacked 3 to 4 geeses high. Best part of the trip was a college buddies 17 yo daughter that was a killer shot. My son (about 12) was smitten! Save the northern geeses so their are more to shoot!!!
Canadian Geese are remarkably intelligent. Before the wife and I downsized and moved to the Shenandoah Valley following retirement we lived in a neighborhood near a large lake and therefore frequently had large flocks of geese on our lawns. If I saw the flock on out lawn I’d come out on the deck and they needed no more incentive to depart. But the funny thing was that they seemed to know precisely where the property line was — and mean to the inch! — after which the flock would resume eating (and shitting) while a dominant gander would stare at me defiantly as though to ask what I intended to do now that they were off my lawn.
And if the geese are smart then sooner or later they won’t try to nest where their eggs and nests are destroyed. Because they really do have to go somewhere else. Collisions with aircraft are generally fatal for the birds, and next time a collision with a flock of geese sends a plane full of passengers out of the sky maybe the pilot won’t have Captain Sullenberger’s deft touch to safely ditch in the Hudson. Go look up what it takes to safely ditch an airliner — the forward airspeed has to be within very narrow bounds, the vertical descent rate has to be just right, and the angle of nose up has to be just so. Get them wrong and the plane breaks up and sinks before more than a handful get out.
Abort! Deport!
They are Canada geese and just as you do not want pigeons to roost in your barns, you do not want them to nest in your ponds. And for good reason!
As a Floridian, I never encounter Canad[i]a[n] Geese unless I visit up north, but when I do, they are generally considered a disgusting nuisance beast. Nobody likes them. Why are they protected? Why, as someone up thread suggested, is there not a bounty on them? You could easily kill one with a five-iron.
Ask a golf course groundskeeper about Canadas. They foul everything. In some jurisdictions they're the object of depredation licensing. Some courses, Mondays are time for 12ga. in the golf cart. Vehicle test tracks too.
When their stuff dries on a mower deck - ew!
The bird is the Canada Goose. If they’re from Canada they could be considered Canadian but prolly not, the bird is the Canada Goose. Mighty tasty too. Like bovine steak…
Abort, yes. Deport? No. Sequester them in my tummy.
Grandma used to have Canada Mints in a dish…pink and awful. Think that’s why she got them…
Get in my tummy! h/t Fat Bastard
They are a major problem here in Texas. There needs to be a concerted effort by ICE to deport these birds as quickly as possible. First, we must deny them birthright citizenship. Then start trapping them an transporting them to the border. From there, the Canadian government can move them to Nunavut, where they are too far to fly to us. You can't even eat the darn things.
I do have to say they provide entertainment (and exercise) for my hound who just loves to chase them off my property. Ever seen a dock regularly used by geese as a place to lounge around? Ugh.
There's no shortage of Canadian Geese. Same as alligators. Cull away... Good on the Feds as my Aussie friends say.
Canada geese are the kudzu of the fauna habitat. And mean too if their goslings are anywhere nearby. My wife was out biking down the path yesterday and came upon a family of geese... the papa flew up and struck her in her helmeted head. Almost knocked her off her bike.
Planned Poultryhood (PP) is a delectable Choice... uh, choice for a viable demos-cracy. Abort. Sequester. Yummy.
More heroes.
I'm with Ron White on this. Forget building the wall down south -- build a net up north!
I hate those geese. They frequented the lake where I grew up, and fouled the beach so bad that no one wanted to use it. One neighbor had them camp out on his lawn foe weeks. He finally filed for a permit to shoot one (a legal process that took months, and lots of money), and somehow, the birds knew, and were absent during the allowed shoot period. We suspected one of the traitorous neighbors warned the bird off. When I left, in the 70's they were still a huge problem.
"I don’t see too many people like me who are worried about the geese."
Something to be thankful for.
Wealthier outfits used to hire out swans from companies that provided them to chase off the geese. Major kickass by the swans as they are more powerful and territorial.
The NYT, pro-abortion for humans, anti-abortion for cobra chickens.
I live on a beautiful pond. Geese are a menace.
I dunno, Miss Ann, "festooned" strikes me as inappropriate here....the bird poop we're talking about is neither being hung nor draped over anything, and certainly not to serve as a decoration.
How about "littered" instead?
"How about "littered" instead?"
If "shittered" was a word, I'd go with that.
The minor league baseball team down the road from Madison, the Beloit Sky Carp, feature a cartoon Canada Goose as their mascot, nicknamed Poopsie.
Here in the Twin Cities it's not unusual to see a flock of geese and a flock of wild turkeys in close proximity to one another. I'm always hoping for a West Side Story rumble, but they seem to coexist without squabbling.
Mr. D said...
“Here in the Twin Cities it's not unusual to see a flock of geese and a flock of wild turkeys in close proximity to one another.”
I’ve heard Wild Turkey goes well with cooked goose as a Christmas dinner.
I recently moved to the Eastern Shore (the DelMarVa peninsula). A few million less Canada Geese would be a huge boon to mankind, and an answer to my own fervent wishes.
Neither of those two clowns has ever played golf, apparently.
In Ken Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion, there's a scene in which characters see the single Canada Goose of the entire year but can't bring themselves to shoot it, even though, they say, it would be delicious. So the cobra chickens went from being rare in the 1960s to being ubiquitous pests 50 years later.
From this it's a simple straight-line extrapolation that the same thing will happen with whales. Today we are all excited when we see a couple whales from the shore, but in 2075 it will be "Are you going to the beach today?" "Can't. There's too many damned whales!"
(Full disclosure: I have wanted to harpoon a whale since I was seven years old and my parents took me to Mystic Seaport and New Bedford).
Hundreds of thousands of Canada geese pass through Wisconsin in their famous V-formations, honking up a storm each spring and fall. At the same time, people flock to Wisconsin wetlands to see this amazing wildlife event. These geese exclusively fly from Canada through Wisconsin along the "Mississippi River" flyway, which includes Horicon Marsh and other southeastern Wisconsin refuges.
Did You Know?
A Canada goose poops about 28 times a day, producing up to 2 lbs. of droppings daily!
Goose poop can contaminate lake water with bacteria like E. coli and Salmonella, making it unsafe for swimming! Please tell RFK Jr. not to swim in water that floats a Canada Goose.
Goose poop increases phosphorus levels in the lake, promoting harmful algae blooms. Four adult geese can produce as much phosphorus as one septic system! It is estimated that just one adult goose can produce a half-pound of phosphorus per year, which has the potential to produce 550 lbs. of wet algae!
How about putting a flock of say 40 or so Canada Geese in the NYT newsroom. I'm sure the reporters would love their avian pets. Might have to be careful where they step or sit though.
They are a problem now. But when Trump annexes Canada, the difference will be yuge. They will then become fabulous, beautiful American geese. They will stop pooping indiscriminately on private or public land, except in San Francisco where indiscriminate pooping is de rigor. The difference will be the most phenomenal, incredible thing ever.
As long as there is open water somewhere they will winter over. So a lot of them are permanent residents of your area. Last year was a thin year for them here, but so far this year some ganders are working on their second brood.
Maybe more people would be on board with saving Canada Geese if we changed the name to Freedom Geese
Stupid hippies.
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