Canadian Club!
Tonight I heard the wild goose cry
Hangin’ north in the lonely sky
Tried to sleep, it warn’t no use
’cause I am a brother to the old wild goose
Oh, my heart knows what the wild goose knows
And I must go where the wild goose goes
Wild goose, brother goose, which is best?
A wanderin’ fool or a heart at rest?
Cry of the Wild Goose, Franklie Laine, 1950
Virginia is for lovers. Maryland is for geese. 
Many of them all around the USA have simply stopped migrating. They like it here. Flying is hard. Much easier to find a nice pond or a golf course and call it home!
Our neighbors have a pond and it’s always been nice to go over there and watch a goose or two. The little goslings are so cute. But today I leaned over the back fence and counted goose family groups. There were at least 30 geese walking around. My neighbor has a problem! Next year, there could be hundreds of geese. Fine for the wetlands on the Eastern Shore. Great news for duck hunters. But this isn’t exactly hunt country. There aren’t even any poachers with hungry children looking to snatch them. I suppose a fox might grab a gosling now and then. But parent geese are mean and ferocious and they’ll come right at ya! Pecked to death by a goose- not pretty! (kidding, but they’ll bruise you to protect their babies) Geese are messy, btw. Really messy!
The dear goosies just don’t have any enemies. Once considered a tasty treat, people don’t eat goose the way they used to. I couldn’t. I have a bird rule: if it has a beak (like a chicken) I can eat it but if it has a bill (like a duck) no thanks
One park around here had such a problem with geese that they got this special commerical goose repellent. It’s sprayed on the grass (something they eat) and it will give them a gastric upset. They’re smart and remember which patch of grass made them sick. Pretty soon they get disgusted and go someplace else. A “solution” for a Society that doesn’t want to kill them outright.
There might be a solution coming, but nobody is going to like it! 
When Duchess & I drove from California to Maryland back in 2004, one of the things that blew me away were the coyotes, everywhere. They walk down the road like dogs. They aren’t afraid of anything. It made the news recently when one tried to snatch a baby off a playground! They would eat the neighbor’s geese.
But I think I prefer a whole lot of honking to that scary coyote cry!
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May 17th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
Not sure about coyotes as a solution. We have too many coyotes and geese around here. The coyotes showed up about 15 years ago and the goose population seems to be growing.