Читать книгу Here's Proof Only We Conservatives Have Our Heads Screwed On Straight!!! - Lowell M.D. Green - Страница 11

The caller to my show is almost crying. “I’m out here in my tractor planting corn, or at least I’m trying to,” he shouts over the engine noise, “but the damn geese are snapping it up faster than I can put the seed into the ground. There’s a flock of at least 100 Canada geese following me, gobbling up almost everything I’m planting and there’s not a blessed thing I can do to stop it. If I shoot so much as one of the damn things they’ll fine me more than a thousand dollars. What the hell am I supposed to do?”

He goes on to explain that he and several neighbouring farmers in the St. Lawrence Parks district of southeastern Ontario have tried everything to discourage the geese during planting season. They installed noisemakers, erected scarecrows, even tried some kind of special lighting system but nothing worked. The hundreds of thousands of Canada geese invading the area along the St. Lawrence River continued to not only destroy seedling corn and grain crops, but pollute the river and befoul the parklands as well.

Without realizing it, my farmer friend provided a graphic illustration of a very serious and rapidly growing problem plaguing dozens of countries. Canada geese are destroying crops, ruining grasslands, polluting parks, waterways and golf courses around the world. And it doesn’t end there.

On more than one occasion flocks of Canada geese have brought down airplanes resulting in loss of human life. In 1995 a US Air Force E-3 Sentry aircraft, taking off from Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska, struck a flock of Canada geese with devastating results. The plane crashed, killing all 24 crew.

Immediately upon hitting a flock of Canada geese, US Airways Flight 1549 suffered a total power loss after takeoff from LaGuardia Airport on January 15, 2009. Veteran pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger brought the plane down in what the media described as the “Miracle on the Hudson” in the Hudson River, saving the lives of all 155 aboard.

There have been many other incidents of aircraft crashes, along with countless close calls thanks to the burgeoning Canada goose population. Airports around the world are now spending tens of millions of dollars trying to discourage birds, primarily Canada geese, from congregating near runways.

What many don’t know is that this is a fairly recent phenomenon. Canada geese were believed to have become extinct in the 1950s, until a small flock was discovered wintering near Rochester, Minnesota. Thanks to fines of well over a thousand dollars for anyone caught killing one of them, from that tiny flock has sprung what is rapidly becoming a worldwide scourge of well over a billion birds. Some estimates place the number at close to a billion and a half, with the population growing by tens of millions each year.

Here in Canada, killing a Canada goose is still considered a crime almost as serious as robbing a bank. But in New Zealand, where millions of the honkers have destroyed the pastures of so many sheep and cattle that farmers illegally shot and poisoned thousands in an attempt to save their fields and thus their livelihoods. The Government finally caved in, and early in 2011 declared open season on Canada geese. Today anyone in New Zealand can shoot as many Canada geese as they want.

In the United States some communities have begun programs of destroying goose eggs, and in some cases the geese themselves are being captured and destroyed.

Better yet, the US Department of Agriculture has launched a program of culling thousands of the birds, then donating the meat to various food banks. According to Hallie Zimmers of the USDA, each bird, on average, provides two pounds of meat; sufficient to feed three or four people. The meat is somewhat darker than chicken and is yummy good grilled, in casseroles or slow-cooked in crock-pots.

I can hear you asking again. Okay, so what has this got to do with conservatives having their heads screwed on straight?

The answer is pretty simple. Actually if your head is screwed on straight you already know the answer. If the Gore/Suzuki/PETA crowd would just stand aside and let conservative common sense take over, we’d turn farmers and hunters loose and allow them to shoot enough of the damn things (the geese I mean!) to bring their numbers under control and then turn the meat over to our food banks.

Knock off a million a year and we’ve got three to four million goose dinners every Christmas. The turkey growers will be mad as hell, but seriously, does it make any sense that while Canada geese are destroying millions of acres of food crops, polluting our parks and waterways and endangering aviation, our food banks are desperate for protein?

Actually, we’d probably have to shoot more than a million a year since indications are their numbers are increasing at a rate about double that in Canada. And while we’re at it, instead of fining farmers $1,500 for shooting a goose that is destroying their livelihood, we should be fining the idiots who insist on feeding the birds during the winter, thus messing with their tiny birdbrains and persuading an increasing number of them to forego their yearly V-formation migration.

As usual the left has things totally backwards, which is pretty well the way their heads are screwed on. They think feeding the birds is being kind to them, when in fact what they are doing is messing with nature, creating a serious problem for the birds and for us humans.

Typical!

On the other hand, with a brilliant stroke of common sense we conservatives, with the aid of a few shotguns, would preserve precious food supplies around the world, make airplane travel safer, help clean up pollution from our parks and beaches, supply the poor and homeless with millions of pounds of tasty meat while providing some good healthy outdoor sport for thousands of hunters but Elizabeth May, Gore/Suzuki and their goose-addled leftist comrades won’t allow it. Canada geese are sacred, they have decreed.

Believe it or not numerous of left wing lobby groups dedicated to preventing the killing of Canada geese have sprung up all over North America. Love Canada Geese, Coalition to Prevent Destruction of Canada Geese, Save the Canada Geese of Delafield, Wisconsin and The Canada Geese Citizen’s Advisory Committee are some typical examples. Movie stars like Alec Baldwin have been recruited to the cause, so has the Sierra Club of New York and of course People for the Ethnic Treatment of Animals (PETA) is very much involved. There’s even a special phone number listed for what is described as goose emergencies. Very clearly for those on the left, there is far more concern for Canada geese than there is for the hungry people they could feed.

Mighty strange isn’t it? The self-appointed, self-righteous “progressives,” whose constant mantra is how cruel and hard-hearted we conservatives are, when given a choice between geese and feeding the poor, choose the geese. Very clearly every conservative would choose to feed the poor. The idea of allowing millions of problematic geese to fly free while people go hungry simply doesn’t make any sense to conservative thinkers.

Those who masquerade as environmentalists sign multi-billion dollar contracts for windmills which kill thousands of song birds, but defend the right of burgeoning and highly destructive populations of crows and geese to risk human lives, pollute our waterways and parks and destroy desperately needed food crops around the world.

So I ask you—who is the hard-hearted one in all of this? Who is the real environmentalist? Whose head is screwed on straight? What’s very clear is that despite their claim to walk the high moral road, to be the friend of the “little guy,” those on the left really aren’t all that crazy about people of any size, although if you belong to a big powerful union the chances they’ll like you improve considerably.

Very clearly however, there are a hell of a lot of socialists and even liberals who, when forced to make a choice, prefer crows and geese to people.

As they say, birds of a feather!