One Lousy Goose

The beginning of a beautiful Fall day. In the chilly early-morning sky Milwaukee's lone Canada goose as honks his way to the pond at Humboldt Park. Most geese are migrating this time of the year. The hauntingly noisy V formation of geese migrating to a warmer place down South heralds the inevitable change in the weather.

But in Milwaukee, the geese found it convenient to live here year-round. They like it here as much as the rest of us do. The migrations were daily, as the geese commuted from Lake Michigan, where they sleep, to the Milwaukee County Parks where they live and play.

Their life-style would be boring for us. They eat. They poop. They go to the park. They eat grass. They poop. And twice a day, they commute. They sleep in the rocks of the Lake Michigan breakwater. And in the daytime they fly over to the park, where there's plenty of grass to eat. There are ponds and lagoons to float in, and just flap their wings with joy at their care-free existence.

Until last June. One idyllic luxurious emerald-green sparkling morning in June. Milwaukee county workers rounded up the geese, killed them, and fed them to the homeless. Here's a link to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel if you don't believe me. Now the homeless are getting fat and lying all over in the parks, smelling and snoring. Who are they going to feed them to?

The paper said the geese were a hazard to the airport. I'd rather have the airport over-run by Canada geese than TSA agents. Perhaps they were honking too much on their cell phones about frequent flyer miles, or delayed flights. And always pecking at the Blackberries.

So, now there is one goose for all 953,328 of us. I don't feel compelled to share him with the suburbs. Honk away, little goose. Have a pleasant, though lonely, day at the park. You beat the bastards, for now.

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