Daylesford is a lovely little town a bit over 100kms from Melbourne. It’s very picturesque – downright Instagrammable, you might say – to the point where you’d assume that some terrible ancient evil lurks beneath its charming façade.
Or, more accurately, in its lake.
Lake Daylesford has become home to thirty-odd geese who have become both a local tourist draw and an intimidating mob of jetty-poopers.
The council met to weigh up a a proposal to relocate the geese to an “appropriate property on the Mornington Peninsula”.
Hey, that’s where mum said our dog went to recover after it was hit by that bakery van! Finally, Scraps will have some friends to hang out with!
Anyway: as the Guardian reported, there are good reasons why the council might want to get the geese gone. For a start they’re pooing all over the place, with cleanup costing $5k a year. They’re also increasing the risk of algal blooms which would affect native wildlife, such as swans.
On the other hand, there’s the “repetitional damage” of the town.
Biodiversity office Brian Bainbridge’s report elegantly captured the contradictory yin-and-yang nature of the mysterious goose. “Interaction with domestic waterfowl on the lake is an attraction for some visitors and residents while negative interactions with protective geese may reduce the appeal of the lake in the short term for others,” he wrote.
On top of that, local tourist destination the Lake House issued a statement explaining that “enormously popular with guests [and] bring a vital sense of ‘country’ to the lake environs essential in continuing to attract visitors wanting to escape the urban jungle”, adding that “there are literally thousands of photographs of them over all social media platforms.”
The fate of the geese was decided by Council: they’re getting a new home, friends.
And the public are not well pleased with the decision…
…even suggesting that there’s more going on than meets the eye!
We at GOAT strongly advocate a third option: simply move all the people out and leave Daylesford to the geese.
Heed their honks, puny humans. They are your masters now.