New York City plans to capture pesky geese that threaten planes departing area airports and send them to Pennsylvania to be cooked for meals for the poor, city officials said.
The plan is aimed at avoiding incidents like the forced landing of a U.S. Airways plane in the Hudson River in January 2009 after a flock of errant geese were caught in the engine during takeoff from LaGuardia Airport.
Mass culls to clear the geese from the area were authorized after the National Transportation Safety Board positively identified the remains of Canada geese in the engine of the aircraft.
The city will pay for the capture and transport of the geese to facilities in Pennsylvania where they will be distributed to Pennsylvania food banks, a spokesman for the city’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) said.
“Rather than disposing of them in landfills, we wanted to make sure they do not go to waste,” the spokesman said.
Scrooge and the Cratchits would approve.
Too bad Canada geese taste like greasy crap if they’re not cooked properly.
msbpodcast – you’re right and I wonder if geese raised on the flight line might not taste a little like jet A?
A little kerosene gravy with that drumstick?
Wanna bet they end up in landfills? What they ought to do is send them to a farm. Clean ’em up and let ’em free range for a while then collect the eggs. Goose egg omelets are delicious… and nutritious!
Still not a solution to the root of the problem: “Environmental Protectionism”. The reason why there are millions of these geese year-round in NY (and elsewhere where they should not be) is that they are still treated as “migratory birds” while that same treatment have caused whole populations to stop migrating. In the past they were migrating because they and the offspring would have been eaten if they stayed here for prolonged period: predators would come for them. Well minded but short sighted Eco-Nuts protected them to “protect the Nature” from human intervention that is the last remaining threat, hence changing their life cycle.
Solution is trivial: lift any protections from these birds and their offspring. Let people who do not like them where they are to shoot, chase, destroy young and eggs. Within generation only those which properly migrate will survive and neither will we have to spend tax money on protection from them or removal of them nor will threat exist nor will birds alter their original life style.
Its probably an excessive response wherein rather than adapt and co-exist==we just kill them.
Many birds “mostly” fly in the morning or the evening. What time of day was that crash?
Heh, heh. Sully the hero. Its well known pilots don’t look out the window on takeoff which is why they are there==doing what the autopilot cannot do.
Lets just kill off every living thing that interferes instead. Lots of back up tapes on Wild Kingdom.
I’m sure a little BBQ is fine with airport road kill.
Environmental protection and the zero tolerance policies have caused a real problem – not only are there millions of these pests but there seem to be more each year. And they are spreading across the country – pretty soon they will be all the way to the pacific coast. They are already infesting Hollywood
Before the TSA started making flying unpleasant and oil prices made driving expensive many of these would migrate south to Florida for the winter – but now they stay in New York making it into New Jersey all year round.
I’m not sure that eating them is such a good idea given all the toxic crap they eat – I personally prefer corn fed Iowa solyent green.
I think just arming then should be enough to remove the menace of New Yorkers from our skies
Aren’t there any poor people in New York they can feed?
Can’t wait to hear complaints from the people of PeTA and their multimillion dollar proposal to inject them with hormone-laced contraceptive implants that have to be redone on the birds every goddamn year.
#7 No they have to fly them business class to Pennsylvania. It’s a government program you know. They probably have 20-30 jobs tied up in this. You need a department head, a second in command, a third in command 5 secretaries, 2 receptionists, 10 goose wranglers, 4 transportation experts, the ASPCA liaison and 2 poop scoopers.
Goose Bagger/Transporter is a civil service job. Starting salary $85,000/year with full medical and dental.
Geese are big. Fast. Territorial. Good parents. Smart. Loyal. Intelligent. Warm. Affectionate. Aggressive. Loud. Silent. Swimmers. Walkers. Fliers. Honkers! Geese are OK.
#7 That was my thought exactly. Is NY shipping their homeless to PA, too?
#12, they might be. That’s how liberals solve the conflict between their vision and reality of budget deficits. Massachusetts was giving people on welfare one-way bus tickets to Texas.
They could kill as many as they want, and they still wouldnt kill enough. These things are a nuisance. They shit everywhere and are VERY aggressive when they have a nest nearby. I had some in my pond and they would chase me when i mowed, chase my kids when they were out playing, chase my dog, and chase people when they came to visit me. I hope they kill them all!
koch Brothers = MODERN DAY SCROOGES !!! Wont pay a penny for the Poor, thinks they should CURL UP, DIE, DRY OUT AND BLOW AWAY !!! So their hired hands, the Repukes can give EVEN MORE TAX CUTS TO THE BILLIONAIRES (AND PROBABLY NOT EVEM THE “POOR” MILLIONAIRES !!!)
Later, the spokesman added that the geese were being given to the poor “because the steel shotgun pellets embedded in them, while not unhealthful, prevented the geese from being sold on the open market.”
sargasso_c,
I love geese and am glad they have made a comeback. Thousands of them temporarily stop within a few miles of my house as they migrate through. They are great.
But I don’t want them at the airport! If they ever were endangered, they sure don’t seem to be so now.
Let’s see how long before those jet fuel enriched geese starts to cause cancer in those poor homeless guys.
Wouldn’t it be cheaper to poison the damn birds and then just ship the poor coupons to eat off the dollar menu?