Maybe not ferrets — weasels, stoats, or whatever li’l critter would skulk around and eat goose eggs. Our city council was seriously considering paying someone real American cash money to walk around Ye Olde Layke™, find goose eggs, and gentle addle them so they would not hatch. (Never occurred to the city council to pay the same people to step on the eggs. That’d keep 'em from hatching for sure.)
Some kind of li’l egg-eating varmint would do it for free. I dunno if ferrets eat goose egs, but surely something would.
We have a huge wetlands on our property. The coulee is about 1/2 km from the house, this is what I see and hear every spring and fall. It is kind of cool, but it get thin after a couple of weeks. These fuckers never shut up.
If only they’d do this on the North Shore. I work at the Carnegie Science Center, and in nice weather, I like to walk to work from downtown. There is goose shit EVERYWHERE. Fortunately the geese themselves don’t bother me, but it’s goose poop city! (Still, it’s a great walk, I got a lot of exercise, and the view along the river is gorgeous!)
When my grandmother was growing up, her family raised chickens, ducks, and yes, geese. A few used to snap at her all the time, until one day, she took one particularly obnoxious goose, grabbed it by the kneck and threw it. I think it stayed away from her after that.
Urgh - no kidding. Living on the 22nd floor of a tower in downtown Calgary was no fun. Loud nasty echoing geese flying by at all hours. I was often tempted to yell out the window “don’t you jerks have some flying south to do?”
They were using the border collies over by the stadiums as I heard. The problem is it’s not a long lasting solution. The geese go away, the dogs go away, the geese come back.
Perhaps the Science Center needs a canine mascot?
[off topic] Did you ever catch the Ion Jones show?[/off topic]
Right. That’s why you want to leave the eggs intact, so that Mama will stupidly sit on them for a month in a vain attempt at incubation. (The thought alone fills me with sadistic glee.) By the time the dumb cluck wises up, it’s too late in the season for a replacement batch.
local lake got shut down a few summers back 'cause of the goose shit. At the old hippie farm on which I currently reside, they used to keep some as ‘guards’. they’d chase any and every body.
My friend has a pond on her property and a goose took to making it her home ( there may have been more geese, I dunno.)
Eggs were laid and the nest was watched excitedly for geeslings and much AWWWWWW was made when babies were hatched.
Then momma took them for a swim.
One by one the geeslings were snatched to their death by the snappers and ( she thinks) pike in her big ass pond. The kids were mortified.
The other story.
A goose laid a nest by the play structure of the elementary school, so it was barricaded off and the kids stayed away from it. When it came time for the First Swim, a bunch of kids and teachers followed the waddling group about 100 yards to the nearest pond.
One, two, three, four, five they went in.
One two three four…were sucked under by snappers.
In front of the kids.
The goose did not come back to that spot next year.
Clearly the only thing that can beat down the godless poop machines that are Geese are American Snappers.USA! USA!
Pigeons are merely rats with flight capabilities. Geese, on the other hand, are akin to raccoons with wings they just assume not use. My dogs would probably disagree, as they both (inexplicably) love the “vegetarian goodness” of fresh goose turds.
Geese are the only creatures who shit more than twice their own weight. It is a mystery of science, the study of which will eventually lead to the invention of Star-Trek-like replication technology. Nobel Prize to the first scientists to find a way to make jet fuel out of goose shit.
what would it take to make serving roast goose a viable solution to this problem? They’re about the only pests I can think of that are potentially tasty.
Considering that in the soup kitchen story linked upthread 90% of the tested meat was too contaminated with mercury to be released for human consumption, I think chelation treatments would have to be part of the solution.
Which generally would come under the category of inhumane treatment for the geese.
