Watch your stepIn the fairy tale, the goose lays a golden egg. But the geese and ducks at Salisbury’s City Park are dropping something else ó and it costs the city about $18,000 a year to clean it up.
Talk about “wasteful” spending. The city has a major goose-poop problem on its hands ó one that’s worsened by the junk food park visitors offer to the water fowl, which are always more than happy to indulge in a snack of potato chips, popcorn or bread crumbs. As City Council heard at its Tuesday meeting, this not only contributes to the poop problem (garbage in, garbage out); it also contributes to the aggressiveness of panhandling geese that are accustomed to tasty snacks and take offense when none is forthcoming.
City officials hope that they can eliminate part of the elimination problem with a public-information campaign discouraging people from giving the geese and ducks their leftover chips and Cheetos. One council member suggested the city erect signs to that effect. We’d suggest the city go a step further and impose a goose-poop penalty for violators of the feeding restriction. Instead of a fine, scofflaws could be sentenced to community service … with a poop scoop.