Duck, Duck, Goose
Each year at around this time, thousands of Canada geese show up here in the mid-Atlantic, their winter habitat. In the outer suburbs, where development is haphazard and patches of wetland intermingle with strip malls, their presence is especially noticeable and at times Hitchcock-eerie.
As I found out from Delaware's News-Journal, they're also the subject of rancorous debate. Besides swamps and fields, they have a liking for gated communities and golf courses. They chew up lawns, poop in the man-made lakes, and to top it off behave arrogantly and rudely. As one frustrated maintenance guy put it, "they come in and act like they own the place."
Others say, well, why shouldn't they? They were here first, right?
At first sniff, this seems like a simple issue: stressed-out humans, looking for a quieter way of life, and equipped with Emersonian conceptions of nature, move to open land -- then wonder why they have to put up with bonafide natural phenomena.
However, in one of those lovely "we have met the enemy and it's us" twists, some argue that suburban living has caused a surge in the number of visiting geese. According to Todd Fritchman:
Geese like the same things people like. They like the water, and they like the nice ornamental grasses they feed on. And they like the fact that people feed them...so these community situations are a perfect habitat for geese."
Fritchman owns a company that sells a new barrier system featuring ultraviolet-emitting line strung across ponds to stop geese from landing; it's being touted as a hi-tech alternative to shotguns and border collies.
Whole thing reminds me of my dad's Ahab-like war against the local squirrels.
4:27:03 PM 
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