They're a major hazard to airplanes and golf courses, they defile public parks with their leavings and out-honk every other migratory bird in North America. Their V-shaped flying formation is familiar to us all as a
harbinger of the season to come. The Canada Goose (
Branta canadensis). Golf courses everywhere annually spend their members' hard-earned money on eradication schemes aimed at these wetland giants - and cities wish they could spend our tax dollars doing the same. They're pests and everyone knows it. (Even if they do have some
laudable qualities. First, they mate for life, although they may take a new mate if their original one passes away. Second ...well actually that's it - they have no other laudable qualities.) But please,
they're not necessarily Canadian, ie. born in Canada, for many of them nest in the northern U.S. and never grace a Canuck sky during their laudably loyal lives according to the
Peterson Field Guide to Birds of North America
. What we need, it's painfully obvious, is to make wild Canada Goose a "dish of the month" like turkey. Attach it to a national holiday like Labor Day. Every family could do their patriotic duty; go out and shoot one, cook it up and celebrate cleaner parks and public places. No farm-raised CG's please, wild ones only. Hell of an idea. Of course, we'd have to screen for bird flu...and everyone (in Canada at least) isn't a gun owner...okay, the idea needs work, I'll admit it.
