Hyperbole, anyone?

A town in northern New York apparently has a problem with Canada geese, and has acquired a license to hunt and kill 85 of the flying raccoons over the next year.  Apparently some of the residents of Clarence have a problem with that, which should come as a surprise to no-one.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the property owner and the city probably took steps short of killing the geese before applying for the permit.  Scarecrows, labrador retrievers, and disturbing nests are the usual methods and are much easier and cheaper than shooting.  But apparently that didn't work, and hence the license to kill off a small number of geese. 

What really caught my eye was this quote:

"If genocide is the answer, they got it,"

OK, kids, the humane culling of 85 geese out of a flock of at least several hundred is not genocide.  Genocide is where someone wipes out an entire population of PEOPLE for some reason.  That's people, which starts with P, which rhymes with D, which stands for Dingbat, which is how I characterize this person in my mind.

Just to be clear, let me state my position plainly:  Animals Are Not People!  Animals have no rights!

We, as stewards of both the domesticated and wild animals with whom we share this planet, have a responsibility to be humane towards animals, but they have no rights.  If we are responsible for the care of an animal such as livestock or a pet, we must provide them with food, water, shelter, and other things that we took away from them when we domesticated them.  When it comes to wild animals, we have a responsibility to not destroy their habitat, to interfere with them as little as possible, and to not kill them indiscriminately or in a way that causes undue suffering. But that doesn't mean that we should live with a nuisance caused by any animal, no matter how cute or clever.

In this case, there is a need to cull a few geese.  The town of Clarence and the landowner are not trying to destroy all geese.  This limited kill off will probably be done in such a way that other geese will be discouraged from coming back to the pond for a while.  The citizens of Clarence who call this managed culling a genocide and wring their hands over the death of a few birds that will be quickly replaced by normal goose breeding next spring need to get a hobby that doesn't include annoying the neighbors.