Original art by Mark Valentine
The Kansas City metro area just has too many geese…
In a recent Valentine Research Poll, 85% of Kansas City residents think geese are kind of cool, but 98% think that goose poop is a real problem.
Walk around Loose Park; goose poop. Every area lake; goose poop. Most large fountains; goose poop. Every golf course; goose poop. I saw a family of geese looking at a large pot hole and pooping in it.
Now let us examine the straight poop.
A single goose poops three times an hour. Imagine pooping 70 times a day. That’s a lot of poop, up to 15 pounds a week. There may be as many at 10 million geese in North America.
That brings our disgusting total to 150 million pounds of goose poop a week.
The facts get even more alarming.
About 70% of geese do not migrate. They just start making layers in the same area. Their poop looks bad and it can be dangerously slippery. Goose poop also carries parasites as well as viruses and bacteria.
All of which does not give humans and their offspring a desirable walk in the park. We end up paying taxes to support parks that are becoming little more than receptacles for goose poop.
Four popular beaches in Missouri were closed last year because of goose poop. Four beaches were closed in Arkansas because of goose poop.
This might be a good time to slip in a line about the deadly mix of geese and airplanes, but the focus of this report is goose poop on sidewalks and recreational areas.
Let’s not make the mistake of spending tax money on this public problem. We should have companies bid for the right to harvest these pooping pariahs.
Not only will we be able to control the amount of geese, we will also have a new source of income. Use the food source. Use the feathers. Be creative with new products. Just decrease the goose poop.
There it is.
I’ve pointed out the problem. I’ve backed it up with facts and I believe I have achieved a new World Record for using the phrase “goose poop” in such a short article.
Several years ago, Robin’s horn (Monster.com?) resonated throughout the kingdom and intrepid, eagle eyed hunters with heavy caliber ordnance (22’s) mustered up for wet work in Swope Park. If I remember correctly, the battle was joined within close proximity to Swope Park Lake (The Carp, free of the relentless pressure, sunned themselves next to empty Malt Liquor cans on the shore.). The slaughter was profound, but the disposition of the dead, to this day, remains shrouded in mystery.
In the 60’s my father would call me out into the front yard in Ruskin Heights, gaze into the sky and at what I now know was about 1500 to 2000 feet, a flock of Geese in “V” formation would pass overhead. This was, for you youngsters, a very rare occasion. What the Fu*k happened? Canadian drones? Mark is right, they are here to stay. It is cold in Canada (Last week temps were 50 below in many places.) and KC is Palm Springs if you just left Borthern Saskatchewan.
It’s a grouchy unruly bunch with no work ethic. These immigrants won’t even land on your roof. Lets eat them.
Charles Dickens, certainly one of the most brilliant minds in history, seemed to take it for granted, that EVERYONE would like a Christmas Goose. They were, back in the day, really expensive. Tiny Tim’s old man had to slave away for a week to buy one.
“The evil Scrooge paid his clerk, Bob Cratchit, a weekly salary of fifteen shillings (cockney slang for shilling was “bob”). Bob “pocketed on Saturdays but fifteen copies of his Christian name.”
According to C. Z. Barnett in his play A Christmas Carol or The Miser’s Warning (1844) Cratchit would have spent a week’s wages to buy the ingredients for the Christmas feast: seven shillings for the goose, five for the pudding, and three for the onions, sage and oranges.”
God knows, there is an abundance of guns and ammo in the Swope Park area and folks in need of serious time at the range. OPEN FIRE!!!!
Bar B Que Goose and some Gates sauce sound good to me.
I farking HATE GEESE. Like Chuck said they are unlruly, disgustingly rude interlopers and poop depositors. I could clean up KC’s geese problem in a few weeks time with a loaner retriever and my trusty Ruger 10/22 carbine.
They will chase you on the golf course during mating season. Ya gotta use your clubs to hold them back using the “lion and a chair” strategy. It is pretty funny. If I could hit the ball straight I wouldn’t have that problem.
🙂
I am no hunter and have never eaten Goose, but I hear they are greasy. I guess it is all up to the cook. They really did shoot them by the hundreds in Swope Park some time ago. Swope Park, famous for murders of crows and gaggles of geese.
I like Mark’s art, he should draw Glaze and Hearne.
geese are mean m-fer’s too. well, i guess if i pooped three times an hour, i’d be cantankerous too.
i’m not sure what the national love for geese is, but they are taking over and need to be thinned out. it’s not like they’re endangered or anything. my vote would be if they land on your property, you can shoot the shit out of them. the ones living on brush creek should be cooked up for the homeless. golf courses can have geese night at the country club. they should all be destroyed.
Amen brother, preach the geese gospel.
Give me and my crew of guys 1 month of hunting these places. They are there because they know nothing will happen, smarter than they are given credit for. Hell, they even have special choke tubes and sub sonic rounds built for the purpose, you would never know I was there.
Are they good to eat? This guy says yes.
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/10/my-first-helping-of-canada-goose/246881/
“Roast Beef of the Skies.”
No kidding.
🙂
Breast them
1 inch strips
Soak them in salt water
Soak in Italian dressing
Wrap them in bacon
Grill
Very dark meat, roast beef dark. But good
“A single goose poops three times an hour. ”
– so does my brother (better than the alternative I suspect), and he’s but a mere man. My late father always said “there’s something wrong with you if you don’t c**p twice a day”… dad, guess my brother is making up for my own ‘shortcomings’ as ’twere.
To wit, much as football is macho & the vernacular loves warfare (‘throw the bomb’), the functionality factor a warring General Patton too embraced the Anserini:
“I don’t want to get any messages saying that we are holding our position (or bowels in check, apparently.) We’re not holding anything. Let the Hun do that. We’re advancing constantly and we’re not interested in holding onto anything except the enemy.
“We’re going to hold onto him by the nose and we’re going to kick him in the ass. We’re going to kick the hell out of him all the time and we’re going to go through him like crap through a goose”.
A lack of intestinal fiber as afield was never one of George’s problems…