Just to smear the blame around a little, let’s recall that one of the chief causes of the American “suburban goose” problem is the continuing rapid expansion of American suburbia itself. As the goose control folks say, “increasing urban and suburban development in the U.S. has resulted in the creation of ideal goose habitat conditions–park-like open areas with short grass adjacent to small bodies of water–resulting in growing numbers of locally-breeding geese that live year round on golf courses, parks, airports and other public and private property.”
More and more miles of highway-side grass strips, more and more golf courses, more and more sprawly suburban developments with goose-dream lawns and residents absent during the day…in other words, more and more acres of former wilderness habitat that has been mowed and trimmed and manicured for human use, but which doesn’t have a high enough human population density to intimidate the geese from moving in. We did everything short of putting out “Canada Geese Welcome” signs and feeding them stale bread every day (and many suburban residents in the early days of the goose invasion, charmed and thrilled by having cool wild birds show up on their doorsteps, did in fact do just that).
So don’t worry too much about the Canadians, december. Rest assured that when I step in gooseshit, I don’t think “Damn those fucking Canadians”, I think “Damn those fucking suburbanites.” 