Spring, ummm, unleashed

Canadian spring is technically upon us. Oh, I know some of you sneer that you already had this august event timed to the very nanosecond, because your TV weatherman of choice quoted the friendly neighbourhood National Research Council/ Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics' cesium-slurping sidereal clock thingy to you, on last evening's news.

But we six millennia old, semi mythical, quasi animistic, partly totemic coyotes prefer to sniff the wind and read time-honoured traditional sign ourselves, and actually sense spring rising like green maple sap in our creaky old bones. Even if we've lately become a little more citified - and sap headed - than we would like.

To whit:

The receding snowdrifts' stripteasing revelation of a winter's worth of plastic bags full of toy poodle poo, not unadjacent to the mouth of the ol' den. They're courtesy of an elegant lady of a certain age, who looks law-abiding, in whose mouth butter would not melt. She scoops under duress (i.e. If she knows someone human is watching) but invariably chucks the distasteful little baggy into "somebody else's problem" territory, when she thinks potential eyewitnesses are past. Nota bene: Coyotes watch. Always. Yer busted. Happy Spring.

Legions of empty, abandoned Tim Hortons Larges, rocked gently in every downtown gutter by a light, chilly Northern breeze. A marked section of each paper cup lip is artfully unrolled to display the sad comment, "Better luck next time..."

The annual horde of complaints about the annual carpet of pate de merde graisse produced by the annual horde of Canada Geese, often in the immediate environs of Andrew Haydon Park.

The Prime Minister's and Finance Minister's protestations that the economy is just fine, darn it! Ummm, okay, that last one is not technically a sign of spring. They've been spouting pretty much the same "We're delusional! Re-elect us!" shit since last fall.

Ooh. Look! Point Number Five. Anybody see a theme here?

Come to think of it, things don't actually smell like proper spring yet. Not really. Pardon me while I just, ummm, hold my nose here. And keep popping Vitamin D for another week or two....

Uses for a Coyote

Just returned from a family reunion and received the following email from a cousin who is having Canada Geese problems --- or, should I say Canada Geese poop problems. The attempted solution is a Coyote blow-up doll:

Do you or does anyone you know have tried and true advice-cum-experience re. making one's pond un-appealing to geese? For the first time in 30 plus years, a family of Canada geese -- as in Make Way for Goslings (yet to be written) -- has decided to summer-over and poop copiously on our turf rather than flying on to Canada.

One non-violent antidote suggested by Google but summarily rejected by me was to spread powdered grape kool-aid mix (sic !) (stomach-ache stuff for geese) around the pond's periphery.

Another suggestion was to rent a border collie for the summer. Good grief....
A friend said she tried flying at them, flapping her poncho wings like a mega-alpha-goose, to no avail.

Other friends said that either some resident snapping turtles or a target coyote worked like a charm; the pond there is now free of the poop-bags (geese).

So we've followed suit and ordered a life-size foam rubber coyote by overnight mail to stand guard on the bank. Whether this wily "predator" with a dangerous-looking, flapping bandana around its neck will end up deterring and dislodging the messy geese or delighting them, is yet to be determined.