As I was running along the towpath of the Delaware & Raritan canal this afternoon, I was pleased to see all of the baby geese out (goslings?)
Every hundred yards or so I was greeted by a pair of big huge fat mommy and daddy geese that hissed at me to keep me away from their little green-tinged offspring.
New Jersey has TONS of geese. Princeton, in particular, seems to be a major gathering place for them, but I rarely see a dead one. Once in a long while I will see one by the side of the road, just like road-killed deer, but I never see them dead in the wild.
Did I mention that these things are huge? Easily the size of a Thanksgiving turkey, and there are sometimes thousands of them gathering in certain fields.
I would imagine that wherever one died there would be one great stink, but the canal is relatively stink free (though they did fish a human body out yesterday :().
This is related to the common topic of where dead pigeons go. Geese aren’t as sizable as you think. They can fly. Turkeys can’t. They have a lot of hollow space and plenty of predators ready to eat them even in New Jersey. Birds can be torn apart in short order from everything from large predators to worms, to insects, to bacteria extremely rapidly. If you find a stripped goose carcass and stomp on it, it will go to almost nothing. You have to be right there when a goose dies to see it as anything substantial.
But where is this activity happening? Is it so instantaneous that of the millions of geese in the state, one really does need to watch one fall and see it picked to bits before it hits the ground?
I have been on that trail several days a week for years and I have never seen a dead goose. Do they hide themselves when weak? Do they fly South to die?
When a goose feels it is about to die, it makes a pilgrimage to the great Geese Burying Ground, whose location is a secret. Geese have been going there for centuries to die, and today there is a vast mound of bones and bills and feet. Frequently, explorers in pith helmets will rent guides to lead them to this fabled land, since it is thought to contain a huge repository of natural pate de foie gras, but such expeditions inevitably run afoul of the jealous locals, and have to be rescued by Tarzan.
You see, the thing is, those predators don’t sit around waiting for the goose to actually die on its own before they move in for the feast. When the goose gets old, or sick, or infirm, it begins to slow down a bit and is less able to avoid those things that want to eat them. Once the predator has caught its prey and killed it, it either eats it on the spot or drags it off to a more private location where it can eat at its leasure without having to share with others. So yes, I’d say the carcass goes away pretty quickly.
Not to go back to being all GQ, but Canadian Geese are so numerous these days around here that they’re actually becoming a huge problem. They poop up to a pound a day, which causes nutrient loading in waterways which in turn can cause them to become choked with weed growth, which in turn causes fish kills in the winter time when those weeds die and eat up all the dissolved oxygen in the water, their excessive pooping can cause issues with public heath at beaches and in drinking water supplies too. Then you get into the fact that they’re big and mean bastards and their size makes them hazards on both roadways and around airports, and their size can allow them to overgraze plots of land very quickly to the detriment of other animal species.
I don’t think I’ve mentioned my old crazy friend in a while. He would go on golf courses late at night, and bow hunt geese, which he then kept in his freezer for the rest of the year. I never tried it, and can only assume with their diet, and extended flying it would be horrible. But it was free to him and that’s all he cared about (although verrrrryyyy Illegal.)