The Canadian Geese Invasion

The big news on the East Coast is the 'Canadian Geese Invasion.' Apparently those chinstrap-bearing, cumbersome, foreign waterfowl have increased threefold in the last ______ (sorry, missed that specific bit of data) years, causing rising irritation among joggers, golfers, amateur sports lovers, dog walkers and picnickers due to their unnerving habit of leaving little piles of goose poo scattered behind them at irregular intervals and in an irremediably undisciplined manner.

The powers-that-be, instead of dreaming up schemes for turning the poop to profit by drying it and hawking it as fertilizer, or powdering it and sprinkling it onto designs traced out in glue, as does one artist, thus creating original waterfowl portraits, have stooped to discussions on culling the poor defenseless creatures. Culling being a handy euphemism for killing, of course. The death penalty meted out just because of a modicum of goose droppings on the shoe! Imagine if they decided to start culling dogs; their faecal matter is far stickier, smellier and generally nastier, and sometimes they even bite, but no one suggests executing a set number of canines vaguely connected with an area where these sorts of messy deeds are done.

Environmentalists, on the other hand, insist that opting for the idea of culling is an admission of failure, and that tomorrow's generation of geese will be no better behaved for it. The solution is to train the feathered fellows to stop trespassing on golf courses and public rights-of-way. The assumption being, apparently, that this knowledge will be passed on through the generations, who will all politely inhabit roadside verges, empty lots, and the edges of ponds, trimming the grass and providing fertilizer, gratis. In the 'Land of the Free', naturally.

Another possible scenario would be that of a gung-ho biologist, eager to see his/her name in lights, discovering a virulent, nascent virus transmitted from geese to Homo sapiens via the former's excrement. Then the hunt would be on. The latest of a series of biological terrorists: Canadian Geese. Their origins say it all. Those traitorous Canadians! Directing their excess, sloppy avians across the border in an attempt to spread a deadly virus in order to decimate the U.S. population in hopes that this will cut down on their pollution levels (much of which is generated in the good old U.S.A.) and help their flagging economy.

Or perhaps the American government will step in, calling on Americans to combat possible biological terrorism by re-instating goose as everyone's favorite Christmas feed, the consumption of which will be considered a great patriotic gesture. That is, until the turkey farmers start getting up in arms . . . Oh well, no solution is ever quite so simple as it seems at first, now is it? The mass media will thrive, though, having a controversial subject that it can really sink its teeth into at its disposal. Headlines will read, 'The 'goose versus turkey for Xmas' dilemma'. And, 'What to do with all that goose poo?' Until, of course, the next national crisis takes over.

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