State bureaucracy is responsible for animal nuisances

The run-away wild geese population, along with the Ohio Division of Wildlife's inability and/or unwillingness to do anything about it, is the symptom of a government agency gone awry.

It wasn't many years ago that my wife and I drove down to Buckeye Lake to see the wild geese living there. That's how scarce they were in Ohio.

Today, you can see vast flocks of them covering farm fields and flocking to the banks of ponds in large numbers, likely because they were so successfully stocked in Ohio by state workers.

Now geese, like deer, have become a nuisance but citizens have no rights when it comes to defending their property against them. An article in the Columbus Dispatch last Sunday told of geese attacking people trying to enter a business building. They had to be escorted inside.

The article said the state had received 280 complaints this year of aggressive behavior from geese. Their best solution? Get a dog.

I have a better one. Get a gun, except that apparently is illegal. The article said "People may use dogs, noise and other nonlethal means to drive off geese. If those fail, the Division of Wildlife issues permits allowing the relocation or destruction of the nest and eggs, and of the adult geese."

You have to wade around in goose crap until you get a state bureaucrat to tell you it's okay to defend yourself.

I say that geese and deer should have a bounty put on them. The Division of Wildlife needs to quit stocking and protecting nuisances and let landowners take care of their own problems in their own way.