Whats good for the goose…(clever inventor required)

isn’t always good for the gander especially where british waterways are concerned…

At night when you try to go to sleep things that have happened during the day come to the front of your mind, which is why dreams are so weird at times, they are just fragments of your day, single words and whole images, cut into pieces, put in a bag, shook up and arranged by your subconscious to make some kind of bizarre story. It’s usually best to write things down so you can sleep, otherwise you may dream of them or they can keep you up all night, so here is my animal magic midnight rant.

It’s strange what people get used to.

When I was little I used to count the dead hedgehogs along the main road on the way to school, there was always 4 or 5 of them. Then as I got older I started to notice dead animals out of the car window as my parents drove down the motorway. I’ve noticed more recently. It’s mainly the remains of dead foxes on the roads down south, but as you go higher up the country the animals change.

In the north wales and manchester area you don’t really see mangled foxes with their entrails pounded into the road, it’s mostly flattened badgers, like minty humbugs mashed into tarmac; and squidged pheasants, I can’t get over the amount of pheasants, they are such stupid birds, but they don’t deserve to be plastered all over the road. Then as you get higher up the country, in the Lake District area, there are hundreds of rabbits throwing themselves in the road and getting splattered by rich peoples 4×4′s.

I think it’s quite strange for people to get used to seeing dead animals everywhere, but we do. In the lake district it’s not unknown for people to pick the dead animals off of the road and to cook them up in a road kill stirfry.

I had never heard of that before I went to the Lake District so I was a little shocked when someone saw a dead flattened decaying badger at the side of the road and suggested picking it up to put in a stew.

They were really happy with themselves, “Waste not want not” they said, to which I subtly replied “i’m not eating f’cking road kill!” then they muttered something about me being a southern snob, but it’s better to be southern snob than inbred northerner. I’m not being rude, they really were inbred and they really were northern. Anyway I digress…

In some places they have special animal walkways built under the road for frogs, badgers and rabbits, so the animals can cross the roads safely, which is brilliant, but I reckon they should be everywhere really. If we can do it then we should do it. That’s one of the things I shall be doing when I get my £205,000,000, that’s two hundred and five million pounds. The donkey sanctuary are getting a cool million as they do lots of great work and I love donkeys http://www.thedonkeysanctuary.org.uk/ and i’m going to buy all of the tigers and the land they live on to save them from extinction http://www.wwf-adopt-a-animal.co.uk/charities/wwf-animal-adoptions/adopt-a-tiger/

I would probably have to buy loads of horses too as loads are being neglected and killed because of the resecession and people can’t afford to look after them, which is completely disgraceful. And I would get the Grand National banned too. Two horses died at this years Grand National and any race where horses can die really shouldn’t be run, I don’t care how nice people’s hats are.

I could save the children and house the homeless, but i’m going to save the animals first. It’s the year 2011, humans really should have learnt by now, we are an intelligent race, but people still choose to shoot each other, invade other people’s countries, do nasty things to children, pollute the planet, and we are so very wasteful that I can’t really be arsed to save humans and most of the time I think the planet would get along a lot better without us. Anyway, I digress…again

So we get used to things, but even though I am used to seeing dead animals all of the time on the roads I was really shocked to see a dead goose floating belly up past my bedroom window. Especially as I had been feeding her and her gander everyday for the last 6 months. I wanted to get her out of the water, but the british waterways had to do it.

My geese woke me up every morning shouting, honking, calling, or whatever you call the racket they make, as they wanted to be fed, so as I am soft I would go and get them some bread. You can see them in the video below loitering outside my window waiting for food

http://youtu.be/cRqv21EU8YI

Geese mate for life and the gander never left her side, even when she had died. The british waterways took two days to take her dead body away and he swam next to her the whole time calling for her, it was heartbreaking. What was more heartbreaking was she had just laid 3 eggs so they were cold and dead in their nest and they had to be thrown into the canal so the gander would stop protecting them and go and find a new mate. The poor gander had lost his whole family in one day.

I was ready to go on a rampage around manchester as I thought the w*nkers, who live around here and think it’s fun to shoot a pellet gun into the canal, had killed her. I wanted to find them and shove their pellet gun up their arse and pull the trigger a few times. I also thought she may have died from the pollution in the canal and the w*nkers who walk by and throw their used needles and empty beer cans in the canal had posioned her, which made me want to buy my own pellet gun so I could shoot them as they walked past. But the waterways said she got egg bound and died of natural causes, which made me feel slightly better and not want to maime everyone.

Here is my gander, he’s ok now, He’s stopped protecting his nest and calling for her at night. Beautiful isn’t he.

My lovely gander

Today I decided to go down and feed him to see if he recognised me from my window, he came over when he saw me and he doesn’t usually do that to people, but he was probably more interested in the bread than me. I have no idea, I don’t know how clever geese are or how far they can see.

I also decided to go and feed the other geese along the canal as it was sunny and guess what I found…ANOTHER dead goose decaying and floating belly up down the canal. That’s two dead geese in two weeks along a stretch of canal thats only about 300yrds long, if that. That’s not a coincedence, that’s a bloody problem. There were only 8 geese living along that stretch of canal and 2 of them have died in 2 weeks, 25% of the geese have died. That’s atrocious!

As I am sure you can imagine I came home and put all my anger and upset in an email to the british waterways, both the local waterways and the head office. I expect to see dead animals on the road, that’s a sad part of life we get used to, but I don’t expect to see two dead geese, in as many weeks, floating outside my window. I included a photo of the decaying dead goose floating belly up down the canal in the email so they have to carry the image in their heads too. They need to sort the canals out, the geese may be dying of natural causes, but natural causes happen a lot more regularly when the canals are full of rubbish, pollution and decaying dead animals and that needs to be sorted out.

There must be some way to clean canal water without hurting the fish and wildlife and if there is, which I strongly suspect to be true, they need to do it way more often. The canals were built in victorian times, so the people who built them were clever enough to put something in place to keep the water moving so it doesn’t become stagnant, but that just means pollution goes up and down the canal until it’s cleaned.

Someone, somewhere, needs to invent something that can be used on a regular basis to get rid of the rubbish and pollution in the canals. Canals aren’t naturally occuring, we built the canals, therefore it’s our responsiblity to look after them and make sure they are safe for the wildlife who live there.

I probably sound like a vegetarian, but i’m not. I like steak and I like it bloody. I don’t eat duck, rabbit or goose and I went off of meat all together for 6 months when I saw a cow being shot in the head, but I eat it now. You’ve got to support the farmers, britain was built by farmers.

Now I have got that off of my chest, maybe I can get to sleep