You silly goose! What are you talking aboot?
Silly, I know, in all respects, that this is an "issue", that I made a terrible
goose joke, and that I added a cheap Canada joke on top of it all. Boo.
Unfortunately, this silly issue is actually a serious issue for tax payers and
most tax payers don't even recognize that it's a tax issue.
Canadian Geese are protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. This leads to
many questions. First, when did bird protection become the expense and job
of the federal government, I don't recall seeing that clause in the
Constitution. Second, these birds no longer migrate, maybe they used to
migrate, but we see them all year long on every and any open field in the
district, be it out in front of IFF in Hazlet, at Franklin Lake in West Long
Branch, at Branchport Park in Long Branch, and the list goes on as I said.
Lastly, MOST people don't want these disgusting, filthy animals around. Most
people view them as a pest, they leave goose feces everywhere, which creates
a health hazard in addition to just being, well, disgusting, there is simply
no other way to describe these awful creatures. It gets worse!
I'm not alone in my complaints about these animals. In Long Branch,
Officials
have decided to continue using the services of a company that employs
border collies to keep Canada geese at bay in the Lake Takanassee area and to
expand those services to several other recreational parcels in the city.
Meanwhile, part E of Section 109-7 of the Long Branch City Code states
"Running at large. No person owning, keeping or harboring any dog shall suffer or permit it to
run at large upon the public streets or in any public park, public building or other public place
within the city or off the premises of the owner." which effectively means that
your dog (and mine) can't chase the geese the away. The city code makes
exceptions for Seeing Eye Dogs/Services Dogs and the Police Canine Unit, but
doesn't make an exception for the dogs belonging to the private company
"Geese Chasers" to run at large in the public parks.
Uhhh, now I'm lost Jim, what is your point?
Right, back to my point about why Migratory Bird Treaty Act is a problem.
You and I are first paying for the federal government to protect birds (that
are no longer migratory). Then we are paying through our city taxes (if you
live in Long Branch as I do) to get a permit from the federal government to
chase the birds away, not kill them, just chase them away so that they can
come back and cost us more money later. Then after we've paid for the permit,
we'll also be paying for the services of the "Geese Chasers". Not to mention
of course that if we weren't paying to prohibit ourselves from freely using
the public parks we paid for, my 2 year old black Lab puppy would certainly
chase those geese away, for free! I plead the fifth and maybe this is just a
dream or a wish I had, but I bet she is really good at chasing those geese and
one time I even had a dream that she chased, caught and killed one, allegedly
of course, which I thought was a good thing.
But the birds smell the dogs and won't come back
They won't? Where is the "research" to prove that non-sense? I, and many other
dog owners, take our dogs to the Wolf Hill Recreation area in Oceanport, a
Monmouth County park, and allow our dogs to (illegally) run off leash. Any
given day, dozens of dogs freely roam the grounds and despite both the
presence, and the supposed "smell" these dogs leave behind, there are
hundreds, if not thousands, of geese that flock to this park daily. The only
animals that don't want to go to that park are young human animals who don't
want to play baseball in a field full of goose droppings. Slide into second?
Yeah right, not if it requires sliding through goose poo, coach. Again,
disgusting.
So now, let us review, we're paying to protect birds that don't migrate,
paying for permits to chase them, paying to have them chased, paying for
parks we can't freely use and based on a real life case, we're paying for a
service that isn't going to work anyhow as clearly the geese aren't as "afraid"
of dogs as some politicians want us to believe. And it's not just an "issue"
in one place, it's an issue all over New Jersey, and from what I can gather,
in many other parts of the country as well. Just more wasteful spending of
our tax money by politicians.