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12-6-2002 - 6:55 p.m.
Honk if you love Geese
For some reason, beautiful Prairie Village, KS has become the winter home of the Canada Goose, Branda canadensis...and just for the record, the creature is called the CANADA goose, not the Canadian Goose. I don�t know why, but bird lovers will correct you and I don�t want you to look like a fool. I further don�t know why any furred or finned beast would want to winter in Kansas. The winter sunsets are pretty, sure, but they are just as pretty in Key West and you can sit outside with a margarita in January in Key West and watch biys go by wearing very little clothing. When the geese first started wintering in Prairie Village, everybody was excited. They are handsome birds and they lent a touch of wildlife to our usually white bread neighborhood. Most of us P. Villagers never get any wilder than shopping at Eddie Bauers. But where you used to see a few geese here and there on the golf course or hear them honking overhead, now there are thousands of the damn things. There are lots fo reasons for this, the biggest being that there are no natural goose predators on a suburban golf course. The geese aren�t really aggressive, but they aren�t afraid of the human inhabitants of Prairie Village, either. They seem to think that they should be allowed to enjoy the biking and jogging trails in the parks and even the grade school playgrounds. I could get onboard with that idea if only the geese didn�t leave behind so much slimy green gooseshit. Brother Goose, observe please that I have never once dropped a load on the golf course. Peeing in the bushes on the back 9 doesn�t count. The AM, Senorita Maria and I are out and about on Christmas errands and a gaggle of geese are waddling across the road in no particular hurry. Probably more than a gaggle, there were hundreds of geese. Traffic comes to a standstill and cars start honking. The geese honk right back and don't move any faster. Finally someone dials 911 and the police come and escort the geese across the road and we continue on to Target. Who ya gonna call? Goosebusters It may be one of those suburban legends, but I have heard stories of them hassling cars at the Mc Donald�s drive-thru for fries.
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