In Baristaville, some folks believe geese have rights too, even if it means picking green poop out of the soles of their shoes, and stopping your car in the middle of the road. Essex GeesePeace is calling for volunteers. The organizational meeting is tomorrow morning:
Planning Meeting: Saturday, September 26th 9:30am
Essex County Environmental Center, 621 Eagle Rock Avenue, Roseland, N. J. 973-228-8776
The meeting will be chaired by Tara Casella, Director of the Essex County Environmental Center. GeesePeace offers a humane, effective, low-cost method of handling the issues created by the population of Canada geese in our area.
GeesePeace offers a humane, effective, low-cost method of handling the issues created by the population of Canada geese in our area.
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I suppose goose dinner is out of the question.
but seriously – they are poultry, not pets – why can’t they be harvested and donated to the various food banks around this area?
Blu, because the food they eat is often contaminated they are usually not suitable for human consumption.
One time I hit a goose with my Ford Expedition as I was driving about 60 mph on the highway and it exploded like a bomb went off inside of it and there were feathers everywhere. Although it was somewhat sick and I regretted being the cause of a loss of life, in retrospect it was pretty cool. Regardless, I would eat goose. Come to think of it, I would eat swan too. Why don’t we eat geese or swan anymore?
Contaminated how? Is our pond water and park grass contaminated? How can that be? Our children play in these places. Are the geese worse than the deer that people hunt?
Blu, yes it is, but they don’t just drink and eat from he pond. Geese drink and eat from various poluted sources and they eat grass treated with pesticides. By nature of their mobility, they eat from lotsThey eat from farm waste areas and other discharge areas. They are also very good at aquiring and disemionating e-coli, especially the drug resistant variety.
Blu, please tell me your kids don’t eat the grass and drink pond water
For what it’s worth, if your kids play on lawns treated with pesticides they are picking up residues, which is another reason to wash hands when coming inside and remove shoes so they don’t track it around the house.
GeesePeace offers a humane, effective, low-cost method of handling the issues created by the population of Canada geese in our area.
From what I’ve read on their website, “humane”, “effective”, and “low-cost” are mutually-exclusive adjectives when used to describe GeesePeese’s proposed solutions.
Geese populations, and deer populations, have exploded to record levels because human-altered habitats, include the elimination of other predators, are very favorable for these species. I am against cruelty to animals, but I say, kill the damn things – it’s the only way to truly be rid of them. They are flying, honking, crap machines that pollute our parks and waterways and by virtue of sheer number are a tremendous nuisance. There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, more of them.
All the garment-rending, hair-pulling, teeth-gnashing and heart-bleeding over culling deer and goose populations would be better devoted towards working to ensure the survival of truly endangered species, not just the cute fuzzy ones with which people seem so infatuated.
“They are flying, honking, crap machines that pollute our parks and waterways and by virtue of sheer number are a tremendous nuisance. There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, more of them.”….Pork you could easily be talking about Homo Sapiens too.
Paz…you’re right…”flying, honking, crap machines that pollute”….sounds like the political commentators on CNN and MSNBC
When I taught my daughter how to drive, we went to an empty mall parking lot on a Sunday. There were several geese in the lot. As she practiced, we talked about the driver’s license test and the point deductions that you get for certain moving violations. I told her that you can restore 2 points for every goose that you hit while you’re driving. (of course I was kidding and she never hit any) Damned birds. Dangerous health hazard. Trust me, you don’t want your kid playing soccer on a field that has pooped all over by these creatures that have taken over northern NJ.
Sounds like Iceman has been drinking the Fox Kool-Aid, I mean tea, again…
Studies have shown that for every 60 minutes of Fox Television a person watches, .43 of an IQ point is destroyed. Less on football games, but you have to turn the sound off and block their subversive popup advertisements. I also agree with your assessment of the problems caused by the Canada goose population in our area. Buying them condoms does no good — the silly geese won’t use the damn things. Addling their eggs, sheep-dogging them to move them somewhere else, and lacing their food sources with birth control chemicals soesn’t seem to work, either. Maybe if we turned a large section of Canda back to the wetlands that once were there, the geese would return to being migratory animals. Would that violate NAFTA?
Not True State Street. They are perfectly edible and are a great way to feed people in homeless shelters etc. Thank goodness they rounded up the geese that overtook Edgemont Park and gassed them. I just hope they have the political courage to keep doing it as it must be done at least every couple years…
If there’s a humane way to deal with the problem, why not use it? I’m not exactly sure what GeesePeace proposes, but I do know that the goal is to eliminate the problem, just in a humane way. Give GeesePeace a chance!
Why all the animus toward the Geese? They have lived here since the last time the glaciers retreated. We should celebrate the Geese, not think of ways of controlling them. All these jokes about gassing them and eating them are offensive in the extreme. Geese are natural, and so are their excretions. Revel in them!
okay mtcsince72, I’m not an expert, but I recall this question coming up before and the answer was that they were inedible. If they are drinking from bodies of water in this part of NJ or along the eastern seaboard then I would not think they would be safe to consume.
They are not edible. They feed on grass and drink out of ponds that are both soaked in pesticides and fertilizers.
mtcsince72
Did you know that it cost the town of Montclair $4,000 to kill the geese in Edgemont Park and that they were electrocuted. GeesePeace uses volunteers to oil eggs and then suggests that you hire a border collie for site aversion.
$4,000 would have paid for a border collie for the entire year for most if not all of Montclair.
More wasted expenditures!
For more details go to the HumaneMontclair website
http://www.humanemontclair.org/geese.htm