Turf war

Dear Sylvia Salas: Things could be a lot worse. Seriously, I know that as the executive director of the Esplanade Association, you and the rest of the group are having God's own bad time with the Canada geese there. (Are there really 8,000 of the things in metro Boston? I can't believe Tom Menino hasn't done some voter outreach to them.) But around the world, animals are stretching our technologies to the limit as we try to keep up our defenses. According to Harper's, a chimpanzee in Sweden was discovered to have built an arsenal of weapons against us, and, elsewhere, scientists have found a way to dispatch mosquitoes with tiny laser beams. (This is presumably while the bugs are airborne; if not, wow.) These episodes make your problem with the geese, and with what the geese leave behind, seem somewhat mild. I read that an array of weaponry is at your disposal, although not tiny death rays as yet. Dogs, for one, and blank shotgun shells. (Real shotgun shells, aimed at the geese, are off the table, apparently.) And, most exotic of all, there's the idea of using coyote urine, which would be sprayed around grassy areas to scare the geese, which I didn't know had the ability to smell. However, I know that people can, and I should say right now that this is not work that I would sign up for. But if it's effective, please don't let the country club people find out. We golfers have enough trouble.