PACKET EDITORIAL, June 13
By: Packet Editorial
Behold the Canada goose Branta canadensis soaring through the spring and autumn skies, migrating majestically in that long, honking, irregular "V" formation, settling for a spell near some sylvan waterway to breed a new generation of sprightly little goslings.
What’s that you say? Those brazen goslings go darting out into the road, endangering drivers? The incessant honking keeps you up all night? There’s a massive, unsightly, malodorous collection of slippery droppings all over your front lawn?
Like most matters having to do with animals, the question of what to do about the abundance of Canada geese in our area draws heated comment, on both sides, from far and wide. We’ve gotten e-mails this week from England, and assorted comments on our Web site from across the country, in response to an article we ran in Tuesday’s Packet reporting that a group of Princeton residents recently obtained a permit to capture and kill up to 100 of the birds that have settled on or near their properties.
Many of the comments condemn the residents. Others support them. Most, however, have one dominant characteristic; instead of building a reasoned case for their own point of view, they heap slurs, smears and other forms of calumny on those who believe otherwise.
A sampling: The "sad, murderous human beings" who would capture and kill geese are "venal and stupid"; they "possess the killing mentality" and want to "justify their lust for killing defenseless creatures." Opponents, on the other hand, are "bleeding-heart liberals" and "animal-rights worshipers who don’t have a clue" that these "disgusting creatures need to be eliminated completely."
One sarcastic reader, unconvinced of the perils of goose droppings, wrote: "I fell and broke my foot when the manager of an apartment complex failed to de-ice steps to the laundry room. It never crossed my mind to kill him." Another reader, who evidently would have killed the apartment manager, wrote of the geese: "I’d love to get a permit to blow off the heads of a thousand of them."
So much for enlightened discourse.
Of course, we’ve seen this level of debate before. Substitute "deer" for "geese" and you’ve got a pretty good synopsis of the discussion that’s been taking place in and around Princeton Township for the past couple of years. Where reasonable people may disagree on issues ranging from taxes to traffic lights, from school budgets to sewer fees, from recreational facilities to road improvements, any semblance of reasonableness seems to disappear when the subject has anything at all to do with animals.
That’s unfortunate. Just as the township’s deer-management program has room for several components, lethal and nonlethal alike, efforts to manage Canada geese can take many different forms. The nonlethal methods include installing fences, posting signs to restrict feeding, planting shrubs or using border collies to scare off the unwanted birds. The lethal methods sound gruesome gas the geese with carbon monoxide, shoot them with shotguns, wring their necks or decapitate them but sometimes these are the only effective means of controlling the goose population.
It’s clear that the residents who took out the permit to kill up to 100 geese in the area between Stockton and Mercer streets are no more venal, stupid, sad or murderous than the Princeton Township Committee members who’ve been working so diligently to manage the deer herd. At the same time, people who have some moral or philosophical objection to these actions don’t deserve to be bombarded with ad hominem attacks.
Like any issue of public policy, management of untamed animals demands serious study, objective analysis and a rational plan of action. Instead, it too often seems to generate little more than mindless, indiscriminate name-calling emotionally satisfying, no doubt, to the true believers out there, but not at all convincing to the rest of us.

