h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Great article - really great!!

Every Autumn I look forward to their trek over Pennsylvania. A few years back I even got involved in the real life migration project on which the movie "Fly Away Home" was based. Have you noticed that the honkers' numbers in the Great White North are dwindling? I've found that more and more are staying down here for the summer...
Are they just getting too lazy to finish the trip home or what!?!

Hi Jimi X,

Thanks for the comments. Sorry to take so long answering, but I didn't see your posting for some reason.

As for honkers, as it was explained to me, they are evolving new behaviour patterns. They are adjusting their behaviour to a custom fit into a human environment... or something like that. Anyway, they're clever blighters. Every year they seem to come up with a new and improved system for fitting right in. They're doing a great job of it, too. There are more of them, virtually everywhere, than ever before.

JTG

Some of our golf courses aren't too thrilled with this adaptation to human changes in their habitat...
One course down here is setting off firecrackers in the evenings to scare away the geese (of course, the course's neighbours are thrilled with this!)

The problem is, as I believe your golfcourse greenskeepers will find out, that solutions like that only work in the short-term. The geese are smart enough to eventually decide that the firecrackers don't pose any real danger to them. They'll learn to ignore the noise more successfully than the people in the area. Here, the only thing that they seem to be afraid of is dogs. They're not the least afraid of people, or even traffic on the main roads... they know the cars will stop.

I exchanged e-mails with a chap in Alabama some time ago, who said the geese there were afraid of his scarecrows. I'll bet dollars to doughnuts they're not now.



JTG

A local college here tried a different tack - they put ropes across their campus lake so the geese wouldn't have a place to land...
They haven't had anymore problems after the public relations nightmare of having a few dead geese floating in their picturesque lake!
Not a good solution, but one that I believe is still working!
More to the point, if a few geese die in a lake a few years back, how do the others know it isn't safe to land there?

At what point do the changes you make to the environment - such as ropes across a lake, or chemical repellents, noise-makers - render the environment uninviting to people? It's a question of how human beings wish to relate to the natural environment: How much are we willing to concede before we feel compelled to make changes?

I wanted to get back to you earlier, but circumstances did not permit it! On the ABC news on Sunday night, they had a story about the Canada Geese problem in Washington state (much of what we were talking about here)! But the enlightened officials in that state have proposed obtaining permission from the federal government to kill all the geese in question which are not going back north! The honkers are a protected species, but that might not matter if the feds give Washington permission to open fire....

They're only protected as far as the government wants to protect them!

That's an awful shame; but I think we are going to see more of that sort of response. Some municipalities have started shipping geese around or holding them in pens; but they are more publicity stunts than realistic attempts to control the geese. Unfortunately, the geese are just to smar, and too prolific, for their own good.

JTG

Sorry. "... too smart". I'm not really drunk.

JTG

Holy old thread responses Batman!

Any idea why the text went all wonky on your Goose article? I suspect a failure to close a quote or bracket, but I'm no Bruce!

$^)

I hope you're not talking about something other than the font change. [Shudder] It's related to the 'boxes' somehow. I've been over it I don't know how many times; but I can't find any missing tags or such... it's a mystery... to me at least.

Ginger's been working on it (editing it). One of the changes she told me she is making is the removal of the boxes. I've not seen it recently; so I'll pop over for a look right now. Cheers.

JTG