Angry Birds: Canadians vs. Canada Geese

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Jordan Heath-Rawlings On the one hand, they’re a national treasure, a majestic bird that symbolizes the grace and wild beauty of this country. It is a sign of autumn to see them fly in formation headed south over a forest of yellow, orange, and red. Hey, graceful, goodbye to summer, and then later. To see them return a hopeful sign of spring. On the other hand though, Canada Geese can be a huge pain in the ass. They like 10 Nest in cities. They like to aggressively protect those nests and they are big and strong. They crap a lot and they crap everywhere. They have no compunction about making a block or a park or a neighborhood or a building their own. And when they do, it’s really tough to tell them otherwise. And they can be downright mean if you get on their bad side. Cities, towns and institutions in this country dealing with geese, infestations have tried all sorts of things to get the lovely, majestic, quintessentially Canadian birds to just. Get the heck out from gentle encouragement to like smashing their eggs with baseball baths. Doesn’t often work. So welcome today to a little story about the ongoing war between the bird that is a national symbol and the nation that sometimes hates them. I am Jordan Heath-Rawlings. This is the big story. Tom Jokinen is a writer based in Winnipeg, who has chronicled Canadians battle with their national bird for the walrus. Hello, Tom.

Tom Jokinen Hello.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings I want to ask you first about your own encounters. Tell me about your run-ins with the Canada Goose at the Fort Gary University of Manitoba campus.

Tom Jokinen Right. So, uh, I’m in Winnipeg. There are an extraordinary number of geese here. I mean, we’re known for geese and mosquitoes. They both seem to enjoy living in Winnipeg. There are places where there are more geese than others. I encounter them. I’m on my bike a lot. And, there are many routes where you just, at the right time of year or wrong time of year will encounter geese and surprise them, and they get quite angry.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings These are dangerous situations.

Tom Jokinen Yeah. At the Fort Gary campus, the University of Manitoba, not only are there a lot of geese, uh, there are a lot of geese, human interactions because there are so many students and staff on the campus, and it’s a, it’s a, it’s a spread out campus, so there’s a lot of human traffic. And they seem to like to nest there. So the, the university has decided over the years to try different ways of trying to control the geese population. And there inevitably in the hook for the story is anytime you try to bring human ingenuity and effort against nature, things go wrong.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Sometimes they go horribly, and is this life finds a way, the Canada Goose version?

Tom Jokinen Absolutely. The recoil of nature against human effort is inevitable. So the campus, because people have had encounters with geese. The campus has tried to control the population. They tried various things over the years, and a couple years ago they hired, contractors to control the geese.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Yes.

Tom Jokinen This is a famous incident, that made national news stories at the time. Yeah. So this, this in retrospect was a really bad idea and I’ll, I’ll spell it out for you. Uh, and they did call it the incident. You know, my, my chat with the folks at the University of Manitoba are very helpful and were willing to talk about their most recent attempts to control a geese population there referred to 2017 as the incident, and what happened was they had contracted an outside private company to deal with the Nests Canada Geese Nest on campus. And the way they dealt with the nest was they sent a team of men out with baseball bats and umbrellas to smash the eggs in the. and I spoke. I spoke to a, a young woman who was a student at the time who watched this happen and she was horrified and people on campus, staff and students both couldn’t believe what they were seeing, where these people were using baseball bats to smash eggs in the nest and using the umbrellas to stave off the adult geese who were obviously unhappy with the situation. And it turned into a public relations. The, the media picked it up. Uh, the university apologized and, and said that they were going to rethink things going forward, which they did. But it was an example of the worst possible approach to dealing with urban wildlife ever fathoms at the University of Mani. And we’ll talk in a minute about other, more humane ways to try to get rid of geese.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings But first, just to emphasize, you know, we’ve talked about geese, human encounters. How dangerous can geese be? How mean can they get, like there’s a reason that people want them gone?

Tom Jokinen Uh, yeah. Well, I mean, the, for the most part you can, if you avoid them, uh, there’s no problem. The problem comes when you surprise. The thing with geese is during nesting season, the female geese, so they, they, they pair off. The geese are known to be monogamous. They pair off and they, they pair off as the same couple year after year, after year. And when it’s nesting time and they come to Manitoba to nest and many of them live in Winnipeg and come here year after year 10, nest the, the, the female will sit on her brood. And the male’s job is to defend the nest. And if anybody gets too close to the nest, they’re very big animals. I mean, I, most people know, uh, if you, you see them overhead, they, they’re fairly noble looking. But, uh, up front, uh, up close, they’re big and they have, uh, a huge wing span and a bony part on the wing called the Aula, which is like a hammer. I mean, uh, they use it to, to bat at. and they’ll use it against humans and, you know, you can wind up with a, with a black eye or, or lose a tooth. It’s, it’s, it’s pretty dangerous to go head-to-head with a Canada goose who’s not happy with you being too close to his nest at this time of year or in, in a few short weeks, I guess as the snow melts and geese return, we’re already seeing them overhead.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Why is this kind of the critical time to figure. where you need to keep free of geese and how you can control the population.

Tom Jokinen Well, they’re coming back. They’ve been south, they’re coming back now. Either they are migratory geese who fly overhead and may stop on retention ponds in, in the city to, uh, stock up on some food and rest up for flight farther north. And in Manitoba. We’re talking. Hundreds of thousands of geese. I mean the Canadian wildlife who measures these things in the last count, figured on 250,000 geese who had staged in Manitoba before the flying farther north, some of the geese and that. We’re talking about 2000, 2,500 geese live in Winnipeg. During the warm months and they come here in early spring to nest so that they can lay their eggs and they go to the same place they nested in the years previous. Mm-hmm. . So they’re very loyal to location. Let’s go back to the U of M campus, just as an example. And there are places all around the country that are dealing with this to various degrees.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Beyond kind of the PR nightmare, uh, of smashing up the nests. When you try to get rid of geese like that, does it work? No. Uh, that, that’s, that’s the, the, the kicker on the smashing the eggs strategy for dealing with Canada geese is they’ll just lay eggs again, right?

Tom Jokinen If they come back to a nest and find them destroyed or stolen, because of course, there are reasons why geese lose their eggs that don’t have anything to do. Private contractors at the university, smashing them with baseball bats, raccoons steal them, other foxes steal them. If their excerpts destroyed, then the geese will lay eggs again. I mean, they, they, that’s just what they’re, they’re built to do. So it doesn’t really solve the problem. The trick is to fool them into thinking that they have viable eggs, and that’s why there are other strategies, uh, less dramatic, more devious for dealing population.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Can you describe some of them?

Tom Jokinen Some of them are pretty ingenious. Well, this is something that’s practiced in Winnipeg, uh, by the city of Winnipeg and also in other municipalities. The thing to do with eggs they found is to make them non-viable so that, but not to destroy them so that the Mother Goose will. try to brood the eggs, and when they don’t hatch, she’ll just assume that things didn’t work out and try again next year maybe, or move along to a different location. Uh, so they shake, people will shake the eggs, uh, to destroy the embryo. They’ll oil the eggs with mineral oil so that you’re basically closing off the pores in the eggs so that the, the embryo. Suffocates kids is considered humane, right? I mean, it’s an egg, uh, uh, by, by crushing them, it’s, it’s making them inert, basically. But it fools the mother goose into thinking that she has viable eggs. So she’ll still sit on them and sit on them and sit on them, and when they don’t hatch, she’ll just sort of throw up her wings and say, well, we’ll try again another time.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Hm.

Tom Jokinen So it works. It actually works. I mean, because you then it, it, it literally reduced the goose population by having these eggs no longer viable,aside from the confrontations that can happen between geese and humans.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings What’s the problem with having a ton of geese in our cities?

Tom Jokinen One of the people you spoke to, Compared them to rats, which honestly seems kind of like sacrilege given that this is a wonderful Canadian animal that’s venerated in all her nature documentaries.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings But why are they like rats?

Tom Jokinen Yeah. I don’t, I don’t think she was, she was dissing the goose, I think. I think, uh, this was a clinical assessment based on animal behavior. She was talking about there being certain kind.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Animals in the urban environment, and this is, this was, this is an interesting thing to study is why are there animal wild animals? Like I, I, I’m in Winnipeg and my, I sit in my office the other day. I watched a coyote walk on my street. I’m in the middle of the city. I watched a coyote, right? I mean, there’s, there are wild animals here. Why is that?

Tom Jokinen She talked about urban adapters, that there are certain animals like coyotes that can adapt to an urban environment but don’t usually encounter or, or put themselves in a situation where they encounter people, mallard ducks and so on. You see them on retention ponds, but they more or less keep to themselves. And then there are urban exploiters who will use the environment for their advantage. And if that puts them face-to-face with human beings, then so be it. They’ll defend themselves. . The thing with geese is they’re looking for food and they’re looking for water. The water allows some protection because they can sit on the water and see around them 360 degrees to know if there’s any predators coming, and the food they’re looking for is grass. And if you’re, if you’re flying overhead in a V-shaped formation and looking down and you’re passing over a place like Winn, What you’re seeing is green, green, green, green grass everywhere. I mean, there’s just like a, it’s like a buffet for them. So they’re attracted to it. They’re urban exploiters in the same way that rats are. I don’t think she was saying that they are, um, uh, mean environments like rats, but they, they, they have the, some of the similar behavioral qualities, which is that they’ll exploit the urban environment rather than just sort of putting up with it. So in, in, in fact, the thing with geese is it’s not that they’re encroaching. on our territory. They’re exploiting it. They’re using it. They, they want what we’ve built for them. And that even includes buildings cuz geese will nest on top of buildings they do at the university campus. They’ll nest on top of buildings for the same reason that they go on water is so they can see around them and they can always be alert for predators. And so you do see geese nesting on top of buildings. They like urban environments. We’ve built them the best possible place for them to live.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings What kinds of problems can that create maybe aside from the, the inevitable geese human, uh, interactions?

Tom Jokinen I would guess that the most obvious is the, um, what they output, to put it gently, is they produced a ton of fecees.You know, what I found was the average is one kilogram a day per goose. They, they release every 10 to 20 minutes. Mm-hmm. , , uh, and one kilogram per goose. is about the size and weight of a cabbage. Oh. So if you think 2000 geese are putting out every day, 2000 cabbage is worth of goose poop. That’s something that people encounter if they have geese around that isn’t very pleasant cuz they’re stepping in it. And you know, and on golf courses it’s a problem. And certainly on the campus it’s a problem in places where there are a lot of geese. That’s not a pleasant situation.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings That’s not what you bargain for when you move into the city without casting any. Judgment on these animals in particular, why do you think the reality of them and the sort of veneration of them are so different? Like, you know, geese are these majestic flying, formation birds that live in the wilderness and are a symbol of Canada. And then the, what you’re describing is, well, actually they love cities and they like to nest on buildings and they leave a cabbage worth of crap around every day. Like . How did we get so far apart in our, our assessments of them?

Tom Jokinen Well, uh, it’s, there’s a romantic notion about wildlife. I think it’s a piece of Canadian history to romanticized nature, but also to be in awe of nature or in fear of nature. And this is a very complicated. Piece of Canadian literary history. Uh, a lot of artists and writers have grappled with the settlers, encounter with nature and as a sort of subtext, the settlers’ guilt of unseating not only nature, but also the first people who were here before the settlers came. So there’s an uneasy relationship between what the settler considers wild. And what he considers civilization. So there’s a, there’s a kind of mixed feelings about the majestic goose. I mean, on the one hand, yes. I mean, you make that noise. That’s that sort of kaun, kaun, kaun, kaun honking Joni Mitchell wrote in her song Urge for going See the geese in Chevron flight flapping and racing on before the snow. Uh, you can kind of relate to it, but early on. Grappling with the Canadian identity, this is sort of trying to make sense of what nature represents. I wrote about Martha Stencil’s novel called Wild Geese, which she wrote in 1925. Where, where it’s, it’s a story of a woman on a farm, but the geese represent a kind of symbolic freedom that she can see them overhead and she wishes for the sort of freedom. To fly away as if they’re angels. And the weird thing about the encounter in the city with geese is there’s the feeling that they’re sort of fallen angels, that they don’t belong here. That, that, that you, you want to say, get out of my parking lot and, and yeah. Go be mythical. Go be mythic. Go be mythical somewhere else. Exactly. So, so this, it’s a, it’s a bit of a weird conflict between the romantic idea and the reality, which. , but, but then again, the question arises. Uh, is it possible in the. To just live and let live. I mean, instead of trying to control the population, and this is what the University of Manitoba decided to do. This was gonna be my next question. Yeah. Tell me, tell me how they exist now. Their policy now is respect the goose. They just took so much heat with this business of smashing eggs with baseball bats that they decided they’re going to live and let live with the goose. So they brought in consultants and and did their due diligence, and they’ve decided the geese are gonna be. So let’s try to reduce human encounters. So they put up fences around goose nests. So they, they put, uh, decoy cages that look like planters in, in some of the areas where the geese like to nest, just to try to urge them to go somewhere else, you know, without being aggressive. They’re not killing geese. They’re not killing eggs, they’re not oiling eggs, they’re not shaking eggs. They’re not doing anything. They’re not touching the geese. They’re just moving nests when possible, or fencing off areas where there’s human traffic. And warning people and putting up signs and trying to, they’re, they’re not changing the geese behavior. They’re changing the human behavior. So they’re telling people to beware of the geese and then they’re not going to, less likely to come into conflict. And I don’t think there’s been any significant conflict between people in geese since they started this. So maybe, maybe it’s a, it’s an interesting example of. Cooperation. Not to put it in binary terms, but I mean it sure sounds like the geese won. Well, yeah, cuz they, uh, they’re able to form their nests and reproduce and go wherever they want. But, but I think we knew that all along. I think the geese, the geese won all along because they’re not to be negotiated with, I mean, it’s a very, it’s a very human impulse to try to come to terms. They don’t come to terms, they’re. They’re feeding. They like the retention ponds. They like the flat prospect of, of Winnipeg. They like the buildings. They’re not going anywhere. So, so it really is a lesson that respect the goose is, is an option, not because it’s chosen, but because it’s imposed. So given that then, and this is my last question, but we do like to perform service journalism sometimes on this podcast.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings If the situation arose, uh, how would one defend oneself or fight? A goose. Oh, wow. Well, I, I think the bottom line that there’s a takeaway from this is don’t fight off the goose. You know, there’s a couple of, you can google this. So there’s, there’s, there’s advice. It’s almost like, what do you do when you encounter a bear?

Tom Jokinen Make yourself look bigger. You know, keep eye contact with the goose, but don’t stomp your feet or rush at ’em or make noise cuz they’ll attack. So the idea is, is to show them that you’re, you’re not a afraid, but at the same time, back. Maintaining eye contact seems to be recommended, and I even saw advice that you should keep silent because that freaks them out. For some reason, geese are always communicating with each other, and if they encounter an animal that’s totally silent, they don’t, they don’t quite know what to do with it. So I think if the point is to confuse the goose, keep silent. But don’t rush ’em and don’t clap your hands or stomp your feet. That’s gonna make them mad and they could attack, and if they attack it, it gets nasty. I never thought I would be equating, uh, what to do in a goose encounter to a bear encounter. I like to think I could at least take a goose. Oh wow. This is Canada. You don’t take anything that’s wild out there. These, the, the, the, the lesson. Back away. And that goes for bears and, and Canada Geese. Yes. They’re much better up in the air in a v-shaped formation. Tom, thank you so much for this. Uh, it’s a fascinating animal and, uh, great story.

Tom Jokinen Oh, you’re welcome.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Tom Jokinen writing in the walrus. That was the big story. If you’ve got a goose encounter, I would like to hear about it. I really want to know if anybody has actually had to fight a goose. You can tell us your story by finding us on Twitter at the big story. F P N. By writing an email to Hello at the big story podcast.ca by calling us 4 1 6 9 3 5 5 9 3 5 and leaving a message. The big story is available and every podcast player. It’s also available on the website. It’s also available on the Smart speaker. By asking it to play the Big Story podcast. Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. Have a great weekend and we’ll talk Monday.