Un-Canadian Geese

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.

Saskatchewan Bail Out

Speaking of mental illness... (don't try this at home)

Word For The Day: shivaree

shivaree - shivv-ah-ree - verb or noun.  1) noun: a late night surprise mock serenade with kettles, pans, horns, and other noisemakers given for a newly married couple by neighbours and friends, as in "Let's plan a shivaree for Bob and Beulah for midnight on Saturday night."  2) verb: to serenade via a shivaree.  "Let's shivaree Bob and Beulah on Saturday night!"  Etymology: an Americanism probably from the Mississippi Valley, although originally from the French charivari.  ("Skimilton" is a similar term used in the Hudson Valley.)  Shivaree appears in Rodgers and Hammerstein's stage musical "Oklahoma!", and was also the title and main theme of an episode of "The Waltons" (Season 3, Episode 19) wherein the bride and groom in the episode are jovially 'harassed' on their wedding night and the groom is 'kidnapped' until a token ransom is paid. The (probably correct) explanation given is that it was a country tradition brought over to the colonies by the first settlers.

The Sasquatch and The Wedding Guest

Let me begin by stating unequivocally that I don't believe the Sasquatch - that mythical half-man half-ape Yeti-like creature of the forest (also known as Bigfoot) who has never been shot, captured, or discovered as skeletal remains - exists anywhere other than in Kokanee beer ads and the addled minds of a few dazed and confused publicity-seeking outdoorsmen.  (Those photos have to be faked.)  That said, what am I to make of the following?  A few weeks ago we attended a very nice wedding out here in a meadow at the base of a mountain perhaps twenty-five miles from our acreage.  We and about 250 other guests then adjourned to the reception and dance indoors.  Although my wife and I left about midnight for home, apparently about a dozen young revelers stayed until dawn around a bonfire nearby, including the parents of the bride.  Nobody saw or heard anything (senses perhaps blurred by libations), except for a thirty-something late arrival and his seven-year-old daughter who both swear they saw a Sasquatch cross the road as they drove to the party.  The man in question is a former patient of mine, from a respectable local family.  He was so sure of the encounter that he reported it to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who didn't display the slightest hint of surprise at all when informed of the sighting!  The young man was shaken by the event by all accounts.  Furthermore, his seven-year-old stands by the story.  Hmmm ... better not leave that case of Kokanee out on the back deck overnight!