Despite Protests, Their Geese Are Cooked

Distressed Olney Residents Mobilize, But Nuisance Birds Are Euthanized

The green droppings and molted gray feathers were an irritant. So was the occasional nighttime honking. But almost no one in the Olney community of Waterview wanted it to end like this.

Shortly after sunrise yesterday, workers from a College Park trapping service rounded up 100 Canada geese that had been a fixture at the community's pond for almost a decade. As about a dozen residents cried "murderers" and "butchers," according to witnesses, the workers pumped carbon monoxide into a white van holding the geese. The carcasses were placed in giant black trash bags and taken to Baltimore, where they probably will be rendered into dog or cat food.

It was a grim conclusion to a dispute that had roiled the neighborhood for the last week and a half. On one side was the five-member board of Environ -- an umbrella homeowners association for five communities including Waterview -- that wanted the geese gone. On the other was a vocal group of residents demanding that the geese be spared.

A petition drive that stretched into early yesterday produced 200 signatures, opponents said, enough to trigger an emergency homeowners meeting. But it was too late. Five hours later, the geese, molting and without flight feathers to escape, were euthanized.

"It was heartbreaking," said Andrea Keller, a four-year resident who watched with her 15-month-old daughter, Alison. "This all came down in the eleventh hour, and we really thought we would have a chance to stop this."

Keller and dozens of other opponents had been advocating other measures to drive the gaggle away: treating the grass to make it bitter-tasting to the birds or herding them with border collies.

"A death sentence for pooping on the walkways is a little bit extreme," said Maggie Brasted, assistant director of the Wild Neighbors program of the Humane Society of the United States.

Environ board members, who did not return phone calls asking for comment, told residents that extermination was the only practical choice. Collies were too expensive, and a two-year effort to destroy the goose eggs failed, according to Shireen Ambush, vice president of Abaris Realty, managing agent for Environ.

Ambush said Environ had no choice but to act after years of resident complaints, which all centered on the same subject.

"Did you see the poop?" asked Chris McDougall, holding his wire-hair Jack Russell terrier on a leash. "I can't walk my dog, there's so much."

But McDougall and most residents said they still didn't want to see the animals killed.

"I am so angry at the board," said Nilsa Hairston-Proctor, a 35-year-old trauma nurse. "We could say, 'There's dog poop on the ground, so let's exterminate all the dogs,' " she said. "There are also people who complain about the bullfrogs. Are they next?"

The movement to spare the geese began by chance. Mary Moneymaker, 57, a school bus driver and longtime Waterview resident, and her neighbor Ioana Hance ran into an Environ board member June 21 near the pond. "We were talking about how cute the geese are," said Hance, a molecular biologist.

"He just said in passing: 'That problem is going to be taken care of,' " Moneymaker recalled.