Another beautiful day in the park. Norana and her new dog Chewy came with Ber and JJ and me. We climbed up Lookout Hill! First time in a while for me, - the leg is definitely improving. The top of Lookout Hill is beautifully overgrown. and there were only 5 crack bags - 3 clear, 2 blue. No cute little unicorns.It turns out the 3 "new" swans are not new at all. We ran into Anne and Ed. Anne has an uncanny ability to recognize individual swans. I'm trying, but in general they all look alike to me. Anyway, one of the three is the lone male that's been at the lake, and the other two are from the last batch cygnets - the ones who flew away in the Spring! You can tell they're not full grown because the beaks aren't orange yet - but they are red, which is halfway there. So the children have come home..to visit? to stay? I wonder when we'll see them interacting with the new swan family, and how they'll get along.
The new swan family swam quite close to me, happily feasting on the duckweed. Papa lingered back and didn't hiss.
Anne and Ed report a goose count of 53 today, but we didn't see them - they (the geese) were not at the usual breakfast bar on the lake edge.
Toppled porto-johns today. Is this really fun? And for whom?
Another article in the Times yesterday about the geese problem. Specifically, it talked about the possibility of using the exterminated geese as food. Apparently people in NYC think they might not be good to eat without being tested. A Chicago animal control person pointed out that these are the same geese that hunters go out and shoot. Well, some might be upset because they do occasionally put chemicals in the park. Of course, anyone who doesn't eat organic meat (which is most people) has been eating pesticides and herbicides in their food for years. Funny how it's only ok when you've paid someone for the pesticide-infested food.
At Central Park, regular sprayings with insecticides and pesticides occurs. Sometimes, the smell is so strong, it would make you gag. They often close the Great Lawn for days at a time when the spraying occurs. For anyone to suggest that birds who are ingesting this chemical feast on a regular basis should then be consumed by the poor or the elderly seems an insult to the downtrodden in our culture. -- People with little legal "standing." If it is not safe enough to serve to the patrons at Le Cirque, it is not safe enough to be dumped on the poor in our country. The poor are not recepticals for our garbage and guilty conscious. Please know that the bodies of gassed geese were tested at another location to be "donated" to the poor and were found to be too toxic. Another location simply donated bodies of gassed geese to a home for the elderly. I guess they figured that by the time the toxins kick in, the people will already be dead. Personally, I am very tired of this "suggestion" as it seems to respect neither the geese who were umjustly killed, nor the people to whom one wants to dump the toxic remains on. Being poor does not necessarily equate with being desperate or without conscious. Sorry to be critical, but please, think this one through.....There is good reason they didn't try to "donate" these gassed geese. Believe me, if they could have, they would have because it would have made the massacre so much more "palatable" to the public.
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