Killing the goose

We're in Rochester, Minnesota, our old home town, visiting friends and getting our annual physicals. Our physicals turned out well, everything under control. After our checkups, we partied with my old work friends, played some golf, and looked around Rochester for update and changes.

The dam at Silver Lake

One surprising change was the shores of Silver Lake, which was across the street from where we camped, the Silver Lake Travel Trailer Park. Silver Lake is a man made body of water, created by the damming of the Zumbro River. Having a lake helps Rochester feel as if it belongs to Minnesota, the Land of 10,000 Lakes, since Rochester, and the surrounding Olmsted County has no natural lakes.

Up the river from the lake is the coal fired power plant of Rochester Public Utilities. The plant is run by a friend of mine, Wally Schlink, who I got a chance to play golf with, have lunch and visit while I was there. But I digress. The power plant has a history of warming thew water in the river, and consequently the lake, such that the lake never freezes in the winter. Even in temperatures of 30 degrees below zero F the lake doesn't freeze over.

Rochester's iconic geese

Now I'll be the first to admit that Canadian Geese aren't the smartest animals on the planet. They seem to be focussed on finding meals and perfecting flying around in V formations. They also seem to have a contest to see who can have the largest flock of goslings. Once the goslings can swim, the parents parade them around the lake in a line so that all the other geese can count them.

Notwithstanding their lack of intelligence, the have enough smarts to know when their tushie is warm. And a lake that never freezes has got to be a big attraction for them. Since they don't bother to fly Northwest Airlines south for the winter, a shorter flight appeals to them. Fewer frequent flier miles, but then there's that nice warm lake, which I imagine is almost as good as sex to them.

The beat goes on

Whatever is going on in their little minds, they found Rochester to be a great spa in the winter time. Reports of 30,000 to 50,000 geese camping out on the shores of Silver Lake were not unusual. To keep their geese happy, the city put out boxes full of corn for visitors to buy and feed to the geese. Hey, the geese like the lake, the people like the geese, the city makes a few bucks and has a natural icon in their fake lake.

But their is often a black lining behind a silver cloud when you try to fool mother nature. In this case, it was tons of goose poop. In the lake, on the lawns of the houses around the lake. Traffic jams. And perhaps disease in the Med City. So the city fathers and mothers took action before they got goosed out of office. They passed resolutions to ask th e geese to move on. They decided to forego the nickels and dimes from the goose food. They said that the geese must go.

Now, it seems to me that the most efficient way to get rid of the geese would be to shut down the power plant, since it's the warm water that was the attraction that got the geese there in the first place. But that really would have been killing the golden goose. So they decided to try ecologic measures to encourage the geese to spend their winters in Iowa, or maybe even Missouri. They took away the goose food. Bad restaurants, or no restaurants, is known to kill tourism. But the geese have a great time flying their big Vs to all the corn fields around Rochester and picking them over for droppings from the corn machines. So the food alone would be a marginal success. And convincing the farmers not to grow corn didn't look like a workable solution.

"Beautified" lake shore

The next steps, from what I see, were to put fences around the lake. In some areas, wires with dangling aluminum foil were strung between the fences at the shore and fences along the sidewalk. Prairie wildflowers were planted between the fences, to further make the shores unattractive to the geese.

And from what I see, most the geese either cashed in their frequent flier miles and had left town by now, or the measures are by and large working. A few geese lingered around the lake, probably the ones that had heard the stories from great grandpa about the wonders of the hot springs in Rochester and came to see for themselves. A few goslings were around the lake, some caught on the wrong side if the fence from their frantic parents.

So far, it seems to me that the ban the goose project has traded one sort of ugly for another sort of ugly. I suppose it took years for the geese to establish Rochester as a prime destination, they're not going to want to go down to Branson anytime soon. And besides, Branson has its own anti waterfowl program underway.