Interesting Survey I Received

We got an interesting thing in the mail the other day. A biology professor at a nearby university was doing a survey for a project called “Human Perspectives of Canada Geese …”. Too bad we can’t do a survey of Canada Geese Perspectives of Humans because that would be interesting.

Given how the card was addressed, we think we know how they got our names and it would be pretty obvious from the source that we like animals. I suspect that may just be an attempt to try and balance out opinions. Of course, I responded. I mean the whole thing was intriguing.

It seemed that the goal was to gather opinions in order for them to make recommendations on the “management” of geese. Again, I do wish we could get thoughts from the geese on how to “manage” us humans.

The survey was pretty interesting. A whole bunch of questions on where you’ve been in contact with geese and whether those encounters were mostly positive or negative. There were questions on feelings towards geese and opinions of various options to help control them.

The big corporation where I used to work had a “campus” with several buildings surrounded by retention ponds and lots of tasty green grass between the buildings. Naturally, this put out a welcome mat for the geese and we had a pretty large population. It was certainly true that they got aggressive if they were nesting and you got close to a nest. I remember them building near the door to our building one year and the male harassing people as the tried to enter the building.

With the geese, once they nest, you can’t destroy the nest but you can certainly discourage them from building a nest in the first place. The company used to hire a guy with his dog (border collie) to walk around and chase the geese away from the nesting sites during the spring which seemed to work. Rumor had it that if the maintenance guys found a nest, they would shake the eggs which rendered them lifeless but it didn’t destroy the nest. Still illegal but I think the higher ups just looked the other way.

I sort of understand because walking around goose poop isn’t always fun and it doesn’t look pretty. But if you claim to be “sustainable” and want to brag about what you do for the climate, then it seems like you just learn to live with the geese. I mean we keep encroaching on their space to build more office parks that end up half empty and then create a landscape that is like rolling out a welcome mat to the geese. Where do we really expect them to go?

So you can guess what my responses were. I really dislike the term “nuisance wildlife”. We build homes into the woods and then get upset when the creatures that were there before us refuse to leave. Then we create strategies to “control” and “manage” the population so that the animals don’t inconvenience us. Forgetting that we created the issue in the first place by continuously expanding into their space.

Wonder how many people like me got that survey. I would be interested in the results.