Monday, July 12, 2010

Canadian Geese "Cleansed" from Prospect Park

Today's New York Times includes a story on the city's roundup and euthenizing of 400 Canadian geese inhabiting Brooklyn's Prospect Park.

The story has some interesting angles, such as animal rights, air passenger safety, feeding the needy, as well as insight into how reality is, or is not, perceived.

Let me start with the last point, and connect it with a statement from someone quoted in the story: "It's a horrible end," said Anne-Katrin Titze, who went to the park nearly every morning to feed the geese. "It's eerie to see a whole population gone. There's not one goose on this lake. It looks as though they've been Photoshopped out."

New York officials intend to dump the 400 gassed geese in a landfill. Other states, which have conducted similar goose hunts, don't bury the dead animals. Instead, geese are turned into animal feed.

The Feds get in on the act, too. According to the Times story, the Agriculture Department donated 900 pounds of euthenized goose breast to Pennsylvania food pantries.

All that bureaucratically-sanctioned slaughter doesn't make the prospect of having a cooked goose an appealing one. And I certainly don't foresee a rush of goose recipes appearing in the Times' dining section anytime soon.

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