The Saanich Peninsula pub was hopping — or, rather, honking — when Buck and I slid in to watch the baseball game.
“There’s, um, a lot of geese in here,” I said.
It was an understatement. Canada geese were everywhere, filling every seat, standing three deep at the bar, waddling anxiously from foot to foot in the long line snaking out of the washroom. I didn’t even want to know what I slipped on as we worked our way to the only empty table.
“I don’t remember it being this crowded,” I said. “Must be because the Blue Jays are playing. Birds of a feather, and all that.”
Buck shook his antlers. “No, it’s like this every night except Tuesdays.”
“Tuesdays?”
“Wing night.”
Of course.
I had forgotten exactly how out-of-control the Peninsula’s goose problem had become, a small group of 1970s migratory visitors gradually turning into today’s permanent, crop-destroying population of 6,500 to 9,000 birds.
The Capital Regional District responded this summer with a pilot project in which it managed to break the necks of a total of (wait for it) 43 geese at a cost of (wait for it) $31,200. As the Times Colonist’s Bill Cleverley reported last week, that’s $725 a goose.
“Is it just me, or does $725 sounds a tad high?” I ventured.
“I bought a turkey at Thrifty’s for $18.”
Buck raised a hoof, began ticking off the costs. “Well, they had to pay the contractor. Had a veterinarian there, too, plus a ‘monitoring consultant,’ ” he said.
“Then there was the palliative care for the geese, the grief counsellors for their flockmates, the marble for the memorial monument. … Fortunately, the CRD got a Canada Council grant to cover the interpretive dance troupe it flew in to perform the eulogy.”
I paused. “You know you can buy a box of shotgun shells from Island Outfitters for $30, right?”
Buck nodded. “And in some countries, you can have a man murdered for $50. But this is Victoria.”
Right, Victoria, where the same people who would happily hose the homeless into the Inner Harbour would just as happily take a bullet for a Helmcken overpass bunny.
And really, by our standards the goose cull was a bargain. Remember that this year’s Great Oak Bay Venicide — the longest running soap opera this side of Coronation Street — resulted in a total of (wait for it) 11 urban deer being captured and killed. It was one of two culls (the other was in Central Saanich) carried out through a deer-management program that has cost (wait for it) $270,000 since 2013. Note that the Minnesota dentist who shot Cecil the lion paid only $50,000.
A less-kind observer might suggest that when it comes to actual bang for the buck (or goose), the Libertarian Party just ran a more effective campaign on the Saanich Peninsula, and they polled just 268 votes.
This is what happens when politicians try to be all things to all people: not much. It’s like doing nothing, only more expensive.
So now we have deer attacking dogs in Oak Bay, cougars running laps behind the legislature and local farmers being pushed to the edge of extinction by crop predation.
Having been raised up-country, the part of B.C. where hunters fill their freezers with 20,000 deer a year, this is still foreign to me. Where I grew up, a deer in the garden was not so much a political problem as a gift from the gods.
My dad used to bag a stag, then hang the gutted animal from a gallows-like backyard structure from which a rope swing was usually strung.
Once, miffed at the temporary loss of our swing, my older sister plunked me in the chest cavity of a hanging deer and gave me a ride by pulling on its forelegs.
Dad ran onto the back porch: “Hey you kids, get out of that deer!” True story.
“That’s disgusting,” declared my pub companion, slamming down his pint of (naturally) Blue Buck.
“It’s real life everywhere but here,” I responded.
Fowl language erupted as one of the pool players scratched while trying to sink the eight ball. With thousands of geese crammed into the pub, they didn’t notice that 43 of their friends were missing.
