GEESE: No harm, no fowl

This is in response to your front-page article “Goose gougers going away” in Saturday’s Press.

Obviously, Charles Buck, the new University of Idaho-Coeur d’Alene associate vice president and chief executive, is the extreme opposite of Jack Dawson, who retired from this position four years ago. Unlike Charles Buck, Jack Dawson was a very kind man and highly respected by all of his employees who voted him as boss of the year and loved by those who worked at Harbor Center.

Each spring, Ima Vandal built her nest outside of Jack’s office and another goose built hers outside the Forensics Lab. This was always a very anticipated event for the employees at Harbor Center. In fact, Jack had a camera set up right next to the window where Ima Vandal built her nest so everyone in the building and the community could log on to the site to watch her taking care of her eggs. In addition to watching her in real time, there was a history about geese and their habits as well as a contest where people in the building would guess which day her eggs would hatch. The head of maintenance for the building even installed a tarp to catch any little goslings from hitting the deck below. Then the big day would come where everyone would watch and go outside to see them making their way from the patio below until they jumped into the water with several pairs of adult geese swimming alongside the little ones.

In fact, The Press did several articles about Ima Vandal. Now comes Charles Buck who has spikes installed where the geese have nested and brought so much enjoyment to the employees over the years. These geese did not bang on the windows as Charles Buck states and there was not a problem with them being messy with the patio below. It was contained within the boxes they were nesting in. Now all of a sudden, he says it requires hazmat suits to clean up after them. Seems to me there is only one person here who has a problem with the geese.

SHARON MALONE

(A former employee at Harbor Center)