Here are more photos from our stay late last month at the Grand Tappattoo Resort in the Muskoka region of Ontario. We had excellent weather and Otter Lake was a perfect temperature for swimming. We also canoed, read books, strummed the mandolin (Arnie), ate too much and just generally did all the lazy things one should do on a three-night getaway from the city.
I spent some of my vacation time considering the problem that the Grand Tappattoo Resort has with Canada geese. I’m sure it is a problem in many vacation areas of this country. I counted 28 in the flock that is summering at Grand Tappattoo this year, and that many geese produce an impressive amount of poop – not only in quantity but in size: their individual droppings are more substantial than those of certain dogs I’ve known. Humans attempting to cross any of the pathways or grassy areas at the resort are well advised to pay close attention to where they put their feet in order to avoid slipping and sliding on tube-shaped excretions of digested grass, not to mention the need to scrub the soles of their shoes before they step inside.
The beach at Grand Tappattoo would be equally bad if the resort staff didn’t stay on top of it, raking the sand carefully clean every morning. Happily, they do and, having been cleared, the white sand stays that way until the humans leave for dinner. Then, the geese return.
At about 7 p.m., the birds move from the treed area beyond the main buildings of the resort (top left photo) to the water, and they swim around the property to the dining hall area and the beach. There they emerge from the lake and nonchalantly strut forward onto the lawns which, to their goosey little brains, must look as appealing as a five-star restaurant might to the humans who have just headed off for their own dinners.
A friend on Facebook told me that metal cutouts of wolves can help discourage geese from trespassing, and indeed the last time we were at the Grand Tappattoo Resort (2020, the first summer of the pandemic), fierce-looking plastic wolves or maybe coyotes (it was hard to tell) with brushy tails were arranged along the waterfront to warn the geese against coming ashore. Wandering among them were the geese. Apparently familiarity breeds contempt even among Branta canadensis (their scientific name).
When I noted to the Grand Tappattoo staff that the plastic wolves from 2020 were gone, they told me that they only worked for about three days at the beginning of goose season, after which the birds would happily walk among the fake canines and graze, even flapping their way up onto the backs of them at times to get a better look at their surroundings
So now, among the waterfront cleanup tasks assigned to a young resort employee each evening is the shooing away of geese from the areas supposedly reserved for human guests. He runs after the birds, clapping his hands and chasing them into the water and away. (See video at the end of this post, which also features Arnie’s mandolin.) It is a Sisyphean task and my heart breaks for him. If he’s lucky, he gets them all across the beach and into the water, headed away from shore, but they just swim around to the dining hall, step out of the water again, and circle around until they are once more munching the grass behind him.
I credit my very-late-onset maturity for the fact that, as we watched the geese through the dining-room window one evening, I did not go over to the next table to correct a man who was loudly telling his dining companions that the Canada goose is Canada’s national bird. There was outrage at his table. “How can that be??” his companions asked. “That’s terrible!!!” “Everyone hates the Canada Goose!!” Etc.
Canada does not have a national bird. Most of our provinces have a bird, but not unsurprisingly, none is the Canada goose. There was a movement several years ago to have the Gray Jay given the national bird honour, but it failed.
I have seen Canada geese as far away as Frankfurt, Germany so I don’t know why Canada has to be the country that is most closely associated with this unwelcome, noisy, messy, airplane-menacing bird. Its fondness for summering in this country probably has something to do with it. I personally welcome Canada geese only as harbingers of spring and autumn (when we see them vee-ing north and south, respectively, honking as they go), but for most of the spring and summer I could do without them. Well, one or two would be all right – they are quite beautiful and obviously clever (aside from their propensity to honk, which must make them easy pickings for hunters). But these massive flocks are just too much.
Speaking of hunters, there must be some way to put Canada geese to practical use. A friend tells me they can be made into excellent sausage. So far, no one seems to be turning that into a thing.
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