Bite Me!
Angie Hong
I’m going to make an assumption that I have been bitten by more species of animals than any other person reading this article right now. Sure, there may be a dogcatcher in the crowd that can top my bragging rights for total number of bites, but I’m pretty sure that I’ve been bitten by the largest variety of animals.
My first foray into the world of animal husbandry landed me an unpaid 36-hour per week internship at the Milwaukee County Zoo – Oceans of Fun show. During the summer, I prepared food for the seals and sea lions, a task that required me to thaw giant frozen blocks of raw herring and squid and then load their slimy bodies into feeding buckets. In addition to emceeing the shows, I also learned the basics of seal and sea lion training and even got to swim with the pinnipeds a few times. At Oceans of Fun, I received my first bite, courtesy of Bodega. Luckily for me, Bodega was a wee little baby, weighing no more than 30 pounds, and the bite barely left a mark; several years prior, a former trainer had been bitten by 450-pound Fernando and required a trip to the emergency room and numerous stitches in her neck.
My second summer in college, I interned at Jim Peck’s Wildlife Park in Minocqua, WI. In addition to nursing, and being bitten by, orphaned baby raccoons, opossums and squirrels, I also cared for a wide variety of animals in the petting zoo. While working at Jim Pecks, I added dozens of new animals to my bite list – chinchilla, kestrel, woodchuck, prairie dog, and fox, to name a few.
It is hard to decide if my most dramatic bite that summer was the corn snake or the black bear cub. The corn snake left two fang mark slashes across one of my cheeks, which certainly added to the sensationalism of the moment. (I learned that snakes don’t like dogs and aren’t reassured by baby talk.) The bear, though, caught me by surprise during feeding time and bore down on my chest as visitors gathered around and gawked, “Look honey! That girl is dancing with the baby bear!”
Working at Dodge Nature Center in West St. Paul, I learned that domestication does not prevent biting. Baby pigs will bite if you try to pet their cute little snouts. (Take it from me, baby pigs have sharp teeth.) Some chickens will peck your hand to bits if you try to pick them up during a farm tour, and the dominant ones will mercilessly peck at their mates, leaving them bloody and bald. If you must get bitten by an animal, I would suggest popping your finger in the mouth of a frog or salamander. They have no teeth, so it just feels like a wet-willy.
By now, you may be wondering what any of this has to do with water resources, the usual topic of my writing. Read on, then, to hear about the big grey goose. Amongst the chickens and ducks at the nature center, lived a big grey goose. This big grey goose had free reign of the farm and often joined the wild Canada geese as they floated on the pond and strutted along its shores. During the spring nesting season, the Canada geese would stake out territories along the boardwalk on the pond and run hissing at nature center visitors as they attempted to cross the water. One day, as I was shooing a small flock of geese off the path to ensure my class a safe passage, the big grey goose came running up behind me and planted a doozy of a bite right in the middle of my backside. The mark lasted for days, and unlike the fangs marks that I had once proudly displayed on my face, I showed no one the bruise on this cheek.
No doubt, some of you are looking out the window as you’re reading this and watching a pair of geese stake a claim to your backyard. I hear endless complaints about geese in our area. They congregate in parks and golf courses, large yards and especially along lakeshores. Not only are they loud and sometimes scary, but also they leave piles and piles of poop wherever they go. Goose droppings are actually one of the largest sources of e. coli in many urban and suburban lakes.
Geese are attracted to wide expenses of short grass, close to water, where they can build a nest and keep an eye out for predators. Where we have replaced natural wetland and lakeshore buffers with turf grass and pavement, we’ve inadvertently created the perfect goose habitat. Where parks departments and shoreline homeowners have planted taller grasses, sedges, flowers and shrubs near and along the water’s edge, the geese stay away. In addition to discouraging geese, these native plant buffers help to keep stormwater pollution out of the water, stabilize the shoreline, and attract other birds, like warblers and green herons.
If you are fighting a losing war with geese on your lakeshore property, visit www.BlueThumb.org to learn more about planting your shoreline with native plants to reduce stormwater pollution and drive the geese out of your yard and into your neighbors’. In the meantime, watch out for those geese and wear extra thick pants!
Angie Hong is an educator with the East Metro Water Resource Education Program, representing Brown’s Creek, Comfort Lake – Forest Lake, Lower St. Croix, Middle St. Croix, Ramsey Washington, Rice Creek, South Washington and Valley Branch Watersheds, Cottage Grove, Dellwood, Forest Lake, Lake Elmo, Stillwater, Willernie, West Lakeland, Washington County and the Washington Conservation District.
Posted: April 2, 2009