People are very liberal around where I am, and I am too, but:
I have never had to stop my car in an intersection for geese. Why is this necessary? Are they just getting used to running the game on people?
I have seen people stopping for 30 seconds to a minute for some geese who like to hang in the road.
If you keep going are they going to get hurt? Don’t they get out of the way? Are they just reinforcing this behavior in the geese?
Sorry about the sp in the title.
One stops for geese because hitting them can cause significant damage to one’s vehicle. I drive across the Horicon Marsh nearly every working day, where the goose population is quite heavy in season. I’ve seen what damage they can inflict.
What action do you advocate?
You also might skid on the geese, they’re pretty greasy.
If you drive very slowly forward at walking speed, it’s hard to imagine the geese don’t yield. Are you saying they don’t? I can imagine there might be laws against this in the U.S. as many geese are protected as migratory birds, but if geese have any common sense at all I’d think they’d move away from something as big as car coming right at them.
There are a few artificial runoff ponds in the industrial park where I work, and for whatever reason these ponds attract geese. Other than having large storm sewer pipes going in and out of them, the ponds do otherwise look like ordinary ponds. They are surrounded by trees and vegetation and even have fish and turtles living in them (not sure if they were stocked to get them started or if that just happened naturally). A lot of people in the industrial park feed the geese, as well as the fish and turtles.
The geese tend to have their babies there, so there are lots of tiny goslings in the spring. They grow up fairly quickly, and after a short time the babies are almost as big as the adults, though you can still identify them by the color of their feathers. These young geese obviously don’t have years of experience with cars and people and everything else though as their entire lives consist of a few short months by these artificial ponds and that’s it.
The ponds are right next to the main road, so it’s not uncommon for one of the flocks of geese to cross the road. People have put up hand-made geese crossing signs to warn folks to watch out, and that works fairly well. I’ve never seen a smooshed goose along the road. Traffic on the main road moves at about 40 to 45 mph but does come to a stop when a flock is crossing. I’ve seen people try to drive forward to hurry the geese along, but all that does is make them panic a bit and spread out, which makes it take longer for them to all clear the road. They also will often move away from the car, which takes them straight down the road instead of continuing across and takes them longer to get out of the way.
Their instincts are to move, but their instincts also seem programmed for things that move at normal animal speeds of 10 to 20 mph. They don’t get out of the way anywhere near fast enough for a car moving along at 45 mph.
…add a snow-plow?
(…just don’t ask me for recipes for cooking geese…)
They’re also protected outside of hunting seasons, so deliberately running them over can get you in trouble.
At a defensive driving course, they mentioned a guy whose court case was coming up. Basically, in defiance of local statue, he did not yield at all for geese, instead choosing to plow through the flock, killing several by impact, apparently utterly pulping some. And he received a citation from an attending policeman, which he intended from the moment of ticketing until he fights it to the bitter end “to accept no goddamn penalty for killing a goose.”
I calmly stated that the very largest goose could be considered the size of the very smallest human toddler. Most people say that only applies to ridiculously large geese and barely ambulatory human toddlers.
But I’m trying to highlight the underlying meme. You’re not allowed to pulp inconvenient living things, because it highlights a disregard for life in general, that could be extended to weaker other living things, like important working animals, cattle of some marketable value, beloved pets, and even humans.
So in addition to multiplying, and defecating beyond any reasonable rate and aggressively crowding out ducks and other smaller animals, Geese, are also the stupidest, and slowest of the lot?
What is a few short months for a goose? Depends on the life span right? They are imprinted with information like all animals, no? How long is the childhood of a goose?
My feeling is that I would slow down and keep going. I wouldn’t want to barrel through. But I think that it’s downright dangerous to humans to stop cold in a rotary which is being fed by 3 or 4 roads, and when people might not be aware there is reason for it.
Why does it not encourage this behavior when you stop for the geese? You feed the geese you get shit and more geese. You stop for geese you get geese playing in the road, and someone is going to get hurt.
drad dog, you obviously don’t like the responses you have been given. Too darn bad. Why did you ask, if you don’t care anyway?
There’s the problem right there. 
(My emphasis.)
I don’t dislike them. Just having a convo.
Once, I drove my parents to a marina where a friend of my father was going to take us out for a day on his boat. As I was driving into the marina, there was a seagull in the driveway. I figured the seagull knew the way things worked and would move before we got too close. It didn’t and I squashed a seagull that day. I thought it might be some sort of bad omen (like the one about shooting the albatross) so I never mentioned it to the boat-owning friend.
Meanwhile, I’ve stopped a couple of times in the suburbs to let a family of ducks cross the road.
What you’re doing is really having a conversation. It’s more like arguing for your side or looking for validation. Either way, I really doubt that driving through the flock is going to train geese not to hang out in the roads. The ones you do kill won’t learn not to do it again and the ones that fly away will likely just be back again a few minutes later.
As for stopping and worrying about an accident, yes, it’s a possibility. However, like QtM said, in areas where it’s expected, you should be keeping an eye out for them. I know that where I live, there’s certain areas where I watch for them. Of course, there’s areas where I wouldn’t expect to see them (or turkeys, like I saw a few weeks ago, in a suburban neighborhood), but if you hit the person in front of you that slowed down for them, you’re following to close. No judge or insurance company is going to let you off the hook for rear ending someone that you argue should have just plowed through 15 geese.
I’d also wager that if you do hit them, it would create quite a mess in your grill and engine bay and it wouldn’t surprise me if an adult goose could break a windshield. And ‘they’re mean and I don’t like them as much as I like ducks’ isn’t really a good reason to argue for running over them with your car. If you’re worried that they’re crowding out the duck population, you need to take that up with your local DNR, not advocate for picking them off on the public roadway.
…couldn’t you slow down to 20 mph and just… cow-catcher them out of the way…?
I can’t speak for all geese, some species and varieties just might do that, but around here we have Canadian Geese, and them things ain’t movin out the way until they good and ready to move out the way.
Of course, the most common time for them to be crossing in mass is leading newly hatched young ones, and even if they felt obliged to move out the way normally, they’re just just in “follow mother goose” mode. If she crosses they’re crossing too, no matter what you do (short of running them over, boo).
a car traveling 20 mph would just leave red streaks of goose on the road. look, they’re more or less like deer. there’s plenty of them, they run around all over the place, they thrive where we live and get all up in our business but we prohibit culling them outside of a few months a year so we don’t risk eradicating them.
Well, I really am just trying to have a chat believe it or not. No need to take it hard, if you are. I know, people are never compliant enough. If there’s never been a goose crossing sign around my way I think it’s a reasonable topic to debate.
I never needed to consider nor ever saw anyone else need to break for geese until just this year and I’ve been around awhile. And as I said I have never seen a sign having to do with geese crossing either. So I reckon the population must be getting way up there around here. Seems dangerous to me. It’s no good suing the guy behind you if you’re dead.
You can say that again. I was hit by a wild turkey a few days ago. It powderated the grill on the front of my car and bent the condenser inward, but didn’t touch the hood, lights or bumper – about $800-1200 damage according to 2 estimates.
Most expensive turkey dinner I ever had.
Moved to IMHO.
Colibri
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