Kill the Goose

I was playing golf on Tuesday, at your typical suburban course with plenty of little ponds and streams to provide aesthetic charm and athletic challenge. A group of about a dozen Canada geese were grazing on the grass near the bunkers off the left side of one of the fairways, and an errant drive off my driver -- one of many -- bounded toward this cluster at a pretty fair clip.

As the ball zipped close, the geese stayed focused on the turf at the ends of their beaks, and even as the ball bounded between two of them, they hardly gave it any notice. Two of the geese poked their heads up briefly, as if momentarily distracted by the notion of a golf ball being anywhere near their dining, while their companions continued pulling and chomping at the grass unawares.

My ball stopped near the geese, yet they refused to move as we clattered the golf cart up to my Titleist. "Watch this," I told my golf partner. I started walking over to the geese. "Hey fellas, how you doin'?" I asked. Not a sound except for the unabated tearing of grass from their roots.

"You're not going to move are you?" I continued as I moved closer in, hunched down with my arms opened wide in as threatening a manner as I could muster. A few of the geese gave me a sideways glance but continued chewing.

I was within four feet. "You gonna move now?" I asked. The two geese directly in front of me finally lifted their heads and started mumbling something to each other in goose talk. I'm certain it wasn't anything more evolved than "Mmmph?"

Once I got within a couple of feet, the point at which I could have lunged and easily wrapped my arms around one of them with a solid tackle, the geese finally decided to start walking away, grumbling the whole while. Not a panicked retreat, but more of an annoyed dismissiveness as they sidled a few feet further away.

Which is when I concluded that we're lacking a good predator here in the suburbs.

There are many people in my town who are wringing their hands over what we should do with the geese, especially after Anna Paquin did that movie where she flew the ultralight with the geese to teach them how to migrate. People here can't see fit to kill these critters, because they believe it would be cruel to the animals, terrible publicity and, frankly, not very sporting.

But our civic leaders don't want the geese leaving huge steaming goose bombs in our parks anymore either. One soccer field near my office is a popular grazing area for geese, and I can tell you first hand that geese are prolific excretors. There's nothing like walking back to the locker room after a hard fought game only to find a dark, moist clump lodged in your cleats, and you're left wondering how many times you dived after a ball and what you might have dived into without realizing it.

They're a road hazard too, although not to the same extent as a deer. When one goose decides to walk across the street, the entire flock follows. Slowly, and paying no mind to any cars bearing down on them. They don't speed up, they don't turn around. They keep walking, and all their friends jump into the road to join them. I have laid on the horn for ten seconds straight when faced with a wandering goose in the middle of my lane, and he still wouldn't speed up, slow down or go back. He just kept on truckin'.

Why can't we let nature solve the problem by introducing a predator to the mix? This is what's supposed to happen, isn't it? If there is an overabundance of a food source, then a predator is supposed to appear on the scene to help to even the scales. A full-sized Canada goose is about the size of a decent Thanksgiving turkey, and the flock is so stupid they probably wouldn't notice if a fox or a cougar was milling around for a while picking them off one by one over the course of a month.

Geese are more of an annoyance than a true danger, though, so I don't think we'll be seeing any salivating pumas in our cul de sac anytime soon. Certainly not as dangerous as deer, but that's for another time.