Thirty years ago the Canada goose was endangered and a worthy game animal. They mate for life and travel together. Wary birds, they normally eschew human contact. They were wild and free and don't mix with humans.
Nowadays I live in a subdivision that surrounds a water-filled gravel pit. It's a lake of sorts and we fish in it, look at it, skip rocks across it. The grandkids love that I have a lake and we use it often.
Today we have two mating pairs on the lake behind the house. They roam the yards eating greens and whatever else a goose might find to eat. It's not at all uncommon to go out for the morning paper and find geese grazing near the driveway culverts.
It's jarring. We don't seem to bother them at all.
4 comments:
Up here near hizzoner Daley's fiefdom the geese make themselves well known and little liked because of the huge quantities of deposits they leave all over the place. With the warm days the past 2 weeks the parking lot at work was a minefield.
They're used to cars, and will often not rush when crossing a road, even when a horn is honked at them or a car keeps moving towards them. I've watched them at a golf course being very leisurely about moving away from golfers and carts.
There are dog services for golf courses and other public areas, and the geese do get moving when they get the hairy eyeball from a Border Collie.
You like Canada Geese? Come up to Seattle, we're up to our necks in the filthy beasts. Each goose puts out a pound of filty stinking slippery goose poop a day. Every Day. 365 days a year. We;ve got ten thousand of 'em. They learn to attack kids, and have learned not to fear adults, and in flocks can be lethal. They also carry vermin and spread parasites and diseases.
Please, come up here and take four or five thousand home with you, I'll help.
It's like most things, eight or ten are charming. Eight or ten thousand are a serious health and safety problem.
Gerry N.
There are thousands that winter in Lubbock. Needless to say the golfers do not like them but I enjoy seeing them. They get fed a lot of bread on the playa lakes. Most have went north by now but I saw a few pair today.
I think they will mate again if one of the pair dies. Otherwise it is for life.
ben
Open a season, hunt them until their numbers are under control. Import foxes and let them go in the park.
In the numbers I see every day, they are no more remarkable than rats with wings.
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