Per research conducted by Mary Lou Simms - an expert in Canada Geese - every June and July, the feds use the annual molt (when every Canada goose in the nation is grounded) - to begin gassing them.  It’s a disturbing practice, rounding up unsuspecting geese at parks and ponds, separating parents from young, or lifelong mates.  There’s no reason to euthanize them at all.  They’ll be gone in a month anyway, as soon as new flight feathers grow in.  They’re just carrying out a God-given ritual over which they have no control.  (There are no “resident” geese in Ocean Pines - they all fly away - this is another lie to condone killing them).  

Records indicate that the USDA’s Wildlife Services mismanagement of the nation’s geese population indicates that taxpayers are subsidizing a $126.5 million program which exterminated some 5 million wild animals annually, including thousands of community geese in financially lucrative, often controversial roundups.

People, especially public officials and especially our Ocean Pines Board Members, are woefully uninformed about geese populations.  How can we trust an Association who uses our dues to kill animals and notify us AFTER THE DEED IS DONE?!  Were they afraid of intelligent conversations and finding a better way to deal with this perceived issue?

Feds tell you there are “too many” geese using the annual goose invasion to justify killing contracts.  The real motive is profit, not over-population.  Roundups usually start at about $5,000 (first-time) and run into thousands if they become annual killing sprees.  The contract Ocean Pines had with the USDA cost just under $3,000 and called for killing up to 100 geese.  So how is it that hundreds more were killed?  As noted in previous posts, we have no transparency with our Association.

The problem is the poop.  You have to clean up after geese just as you would a dog or cat, but that’s easy.  Buy a goose-poop machine ($4,000 - $6,000) that picks it up for less than the cost of a round up.  You can actually pick it up by hand with gloves and shovels.  Goose droppings are harmless.  They’re made up of recycled grass.  Unless the grass is covered with pesticide, which by the way, would make the geese meat inedible, so donating the meat to a food pantry is another lie.

You can also incorporate the clean-up into general park maintenance.  Maintenance crews can vacuum or spray sidewalks and give the parks a thorough clean-up once a week with a huge mower that shatters the poop.  The results are astonishing.  The feds also tell you that the geese “settle” into a location - that they are the same geese day in and day out.  That’s not true either.  Most geese consider the heavens a second home.  For example, most of the geese are gone after they carry out nesting, parenting and other rituals.  After molt and the flight feathers grow back, they leave.

Other little white lies:

MYTH:  Geese leave up to five pounds of poop a day.  FACT:  A single goose eliminates about as much feces as a pet cat.

MYTH:  Geese carry disease.  FACT:  So not true.  Geese are among the most immaculate creatures on the planet.  There’s also not a single incident of a Canada goose ever having transmitted a disease to humans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

MYTH: Geese are aggressive.  FACT: Only when nesting or there are young but that’s generally true of all species.  Generally geese are gentle souls.

MYTH: Geese meat from roundups goes to homeless shelters and food pantries.  FACT: Another fib. Geese meat is unsuitable for human consumption because geese may have grazed on pesticide-laden grass.  A growing number of pantries no longer accept geese meat.

As for Mary Lou Simms, where this information was reprinted with her permission, she as well as many others including me, will continue to educate the nation about geese, one community at a time, for as long as it takes, no matter how long it takes.

Personally, I’ve lived in Ocean Pines for two years and was proud to be a resident - until the news hit about the geese being slaughtered after the fact.  They were more like pets, so it couldn’t have been too much of a challenge to round them up.  And it makes me sick to my stomach that I helped fund this through my Association Dues.

It’s too late for the geese that have already been slaughtered, but come on people, educate yourselves and let’s do a better job co-existing with God’s creatures.  If nothing else to use this as a teaching moment and keep our children from crying themselves to sleep wondering where “their” geese have gone and mother’s from tossing and turning at night trying to figure out a way to explain why we had to permanently kill what was a only a temporary inconvenience.