Protecting Native Wildlife in your Neighborhood
Know their Rights and yours, to protect them.
A flock of geese showed up out of somewhere with their new goslings. They’ve never been in our area. I’m doing my best fighting the urge to run out and take pictures and video. These are glorious creatures. And, OH, Karma! You are hilarious. Our next door neighbor caught me outside a few days ago. Mad as a wet hornet. He let me know I had to stop feeding the ducks. He has to use firecrackers to shoo them. It’s my fault. There were too many. They were soiling his front porch. His daughter’s bedroom has bugs because of them. (I could bring up their backyard having 10 years of fallen oak leaves layered over his dog’s waste, but why stop a rant?) He couldn’t take it. Can’t take it. He likes the ducks, but if I don’t stop feeding them, he will have them culled. He doesn’t WANT to do it, but I will make him do it if I don’t stop.
I have lines. Just a few lines drawn in the sand in my brain. One of those lines involves killing things for convenience while blaming someone else for your murdering choices. The other line is putting my name on it. As if a grown man can’t stand up and say I’m going to kill them because I don’t care about animals, I care about me. Instead, he uses me for his subsidized moral walker. Sorry, bud. I’m not holding you up.
You’ll have to give a little to get a little.
I acquiesced for the duck’s sake. I will agree wholeheartedly that we all don’t like ducks like I like ducks. I acquiesced to the location of feeding. I moved feeding to the other side of the front yard, past the driveway. The ducks ignored his front porch. Until he installed ten feet of PVC chicken wire fence to extend out from his side yard fence. Thinking ducks can’t walk around fences. Which they can. He’d created a great line of cover to follow to the new feeding grounds. Ducks walk around fences. Ducks fly over fences and perch on fences. I thought he got the memo.
LaFollett B&B Rest Stop (me) moved operations slightly south. We are in business. We are within the law and statute provisions. That’s when Karma arrived to show her sense of humor.
A never-before-seen flock of eight adult geese with seven goslings are currently hanging out on his front porch, in his front yard, and on his driveway. I could let him know not to mess with a full flock of protective geese. I could let him know his ten feet of improvised fence created a line of sight for geese and ducks that says, “HEY! You should nap here in this protected nook.”
I could inform him geese are pooping on his porch because the ducks paid them to poop on his porch. Ducks are a bit cartel like that.
But no. We at LaFollett B&B Rest Stop hold our neighbors in regard. Some we regard less than others.
