Charlotte's Wild Goose Chase »
Apparently a Canada Goose (and not a Canadian Goose, as I'm sure I've said before) can leave, er, behind, 2 pounds of fecal matter daily.
Then again, it might only be 1.5 pounds. Pretty impressive, either way.
According to Ducks Unlimited, the average (male) goose weighs no more than 13 pounds. That means they may recycle 20% of their, uh, self, each day? Holy cow. That's like me going to the bathroom and leaving behind 30 or 40 pounds or more. Per day. That's just insane. It's not that I don't believe it. It's just a huge number.
So you can probably understand why the Canada Goose isn't especially welcome in the public parks of Charlotte. Frankly, I've never had a problem with the geese, and indeed have even fed them - but then, I don't have to clean up after them either. This all means that it is really little surprise that a park in Charlotte has decided to send them, well, elsewhere. As long as it's not our problem.
Park officials have a problem defining this term, however, and when asked for more information, said that "...they acknowledge they aren't sure where they'll go." That's nice. They are going to send these fecal-spewing animals elsewhere, so that it's not their problem any longer.
Let's assume that is a good idea and look at how they are going to accomplish this. They intend to shine laser pointers at the birds. Tell me - if you saw some park-cleaning, geese-poop-scooping maniac shining a laser pointer at you, would you leave? I sure would. That's totally understandable. But are they going to do this daily? Weekly? What's to keep the birds from coming back once they've left?
All of this seems to me to boil down to the fact that no one has any idea what will happen, other than that a greasy guy named Bubba that is peripherally related to Bill Murray will suddenly have a laser pointer to satisfy his fixation on the geese that inhabit his park. I hope he doesn't get plastic explosives.
Oh, the cost? Eighty-four thousand dollars. As I already mentioned, I don't know if this is daily, weekly or what - but annually it only costs thirty-four thousand to clean up after the geese, so I hope the "treatment" lasts at least three years or the city is just wasting their money (again). I'd also really like to know how many laser pointers Bubba gets for that sort of cabbage, and just what happens to them - are we really financing presentation supplies for the City Council?
Here's the solution employed by Bradfield Farms:
Comments (2)
At Gordon, there was a big grassy quad in the middle of the campus, which had some athletic fields, and which was also the route for most students to walk to and from various classes. (side note: also the largest expanse of open grass north of Boston... you can spot it pretty easily from an airplane flying into Logan Airport) The quad was also an *extremely* popular spot for Canada (Canadian?) Geese. Imagine a field the size of a couple football fields, that you walked across every day, being almost completely covered by goose feces. Nasty. Most Gordonites grow to hate those darn geese.
Posted by Peter | January 20, 2005 12:27 PM
I've wanted to post this for a while, but as is the Observer's style, they took the link offline, and since I haven't had a chance to do scan in the paper, I've just been putting it off (posted above).
Apparently the Bradfield Farms pond in Northeast Charlotte had a similar goose problem. Their solution? They purchased a fake alligator (or two) and laid them in the pond. The geese haven't been seen since. The cost? $56.50. That's a lot better than $84,000.
Posted by Chad Everett | September 4, 2007 5:25 PM