"'Make Way for Goslings"? Not so fast...

Look closely at this picture and you'll see twelve baby geese, an even dozen cute and fluffy goslings that, before we know it will turn into big old Canada geese, crapping their way along the banks of the River Charles.  That's where you'll find them, that and in the Boston Public Garden, where they'll also be merrily honking and crapping along. 

God, I hate them. 

This was not always the case.

Back in the day, I loved seeing them twice a year, coming and going, in chevron flight from wherever they summer in Canada and wherever they winter in the U.S. Which is well south of Boston.

I thought they looked majestic: those long necks, those lovely black and white heads. 

So much more interesting than farmyard geese. (Not that I'm all that familiar with farmyard geese. Just sayin'.)

But my tolerance for Canada geese went way down when some of them got too lazy to fly back to Canada or down to South Carolina and started hanging out in Massachusetts.

When first I noticed them, they were in my cousin MB's backyard on the Cape. She lives on a pond, and that meant that a water park was available to the geese. Theirs for the honking. So they moved right in.

The thing with geese is that they might swim in the water, but they don't crap in it. They crap on land.

So MB's backyard became a minefield of goose turds.

When the geese were meandering around the yard, MB's husband would go after them with a bullwhip. No, not to whip them, but to make a cracking noise that would scare them. I was going to say 'scare the shit out of them', but that really wasn't necessary. Their crap was already all over the place.

After a few years, they apparently stopped including West Dennis on their migratory tour.

That was about the time they started showing up in droves in Boston, where they flocked to the Esplanade, a beautiful park along the Charles where Bostonians of the human variety flock to walk, run, blade, bike, sunbathe, and picnic. I walk there several times a week, but especially this time of year, it's pretty hazardous. The walkways (and presumably the grass) are covered with crap.

Many years ago, when I first lived on Beacon Hall, the public sidewalks were equally treacherous, only they were covered with dog crap. If you were walking on Charles Street, you weren't window shopping. You were looking down. As we used to say, "You feet better have eyes." 

Then, all of a sudden, people started picking up after the dogs, and now it's a bit of a shock to come across a pile o' turd. These days the only place you need to look down - other than the occasional glances ahead to make sure there are no loose bricks - is when you're in the street. You really don't want to step on a flattened rat.

While the geese aren't dirtying up Charles Street, or the residential streets on the Hill - too far from the waterfront for their liking - they are in the places where people do want to walk, run, etc. And that's the Esplanade and the Boston Public Garden.

Minefields, both.

It didn't used to be this way. When it was just ducks in the Public Garden or along the Charles, I don't recall ever encountering a duck turd. The water was apparently their toilet. Good for them! We could admire their serene swims, their amusing ducking, the flotillas of ducklings they produced each spring. 

Geese, on the other hand, don't give a crap where they go. Or maybe they do. Whichever the case, they manage to go just where you're about to set foot, or - if you're the picnicking type - throw down your picnic blanket. 

Their turds are disgusting. There's always a greenish element, then a black and whitish extension that looks like a giant cigar ash. And speaking of cigars, that seems to be about the median size of a goose turd. They ain't tiny, that's for sure.

A few years ago, they tried chasing the geese off by setting dogs after them. The dogs didn't kill the geese, mind you, but this was still considered animal cruelty. So they called off the dogs.

Then there was a scheme where volunteers would come out, find the nests, distract the nester, and coat the eggs with vegetable oil. This would keep the eggs from hatching. The finest in birth control. As I recall, this brought some group of nutters out to protest what they considered some sort of anserine abortion.

Sigh.

This year, there doesn't appear to be any concerted attention being paid to the rapidly reproducing and incessantly defecating goose population.

So they're everywhere.

The other day, on my morning stroll, one of the geese - not sure if it was a goose or a gander, they look a lot alike - started to give me the stink eye. There were no goslings nearby to protect, and I hadn't been giving it the stink eye, so maybe it was just reading my mind and knew that I was thinking: dirty bird! get ye to Canada!

As I said, there were no goslings around, and there were no people around either, so I gave the stink eye goose a nasty look and told it, "Get out of here, you little shitter."

The little shitter, of course, paid no attention and proceeded to take a dump in my path.

I really do despise these critters.

I would not, of course, do anything to harm them. No swift kick in the goose ass. No running towards them waving my arms and honking. No harm, no foul (fowl?) to those darling fluffy little goslings.

But I'd sure be happier if all the goose-gander-gosling families marauding around my walking paths made their way out of Boston.

I don't care if the goose is cooked. Sorry to be so NIMBY-ish, but I just want them OUT.