AND ANOTHER THING
`Clap your hands!' says Peter Pan as the alien geese meet their doom
PAUL JOHNSON
There was a morning, earlier this month, when all nature conspired to delight the eye, and I walked into Kensington Gardens to relish it. The sun radiated golden beams from an ultramarine sky and made the end- less vistas of trees glitter and sparkle in the faint zephyr from the south. Deep blue shadows fell across the rich grass and speck- led eager figures speeding along the Broad Walk on skateboards and roller-blades and the new silver scooters. Through the sun- shine and shade walked lanky girls parading their dogs, waddling dachshunds flapping soft ears, golden pekes, perky Airedales. These girls trod in the footsteps of Geor- gian beauties who once paraded here. I was reminded of Gainsborough's masterpiece, `The Mall', in which he united all his match- less skills in rendering tall, willowy women, slyly surveying each other out of laser-beam eyes, with his passion for painting trees, which overwhelm the picture in deep green cliffs of foliage. It was spotted by that great collector, the coke-magician Frick, and now hangs, like so many other wonderful pic- tures, in his New York mansion.
I am in Kensington Gardens almost every day. So many things have happened there. George II had the Round Pond completed and filled in 1728, the year after his acces- sion, and walked round it at least once every day. By its side he was one day relieved of his money, watch and gold shoe- buckles by 'a very respectful' robber. He died in the nearby palace of a stroke 'sitting on his close-stool'. A few rooms away Queen Anne had met a similar fate after one of the gargantuan meals with which she solaced her failure to produce a live child. I told Diana, Princess of Wales this, while lunching with her in this faded, cosy palace, and she shed a silent tear for the poor lady, then laughed and said, `I'm more likely to die of starvation.' Now the superb 'chil- dren's playground which commemorates her is nearly complete. Indeed a full-scale galleon, which invites little boarders, is already floating in the sand, and my five- year-old grandson, Leo, who is a passionate pirate, is planning what he will do to it.
Things have been happening on the Round Pond too, which glitters under the sunshine. For years it has been colonised, like almost every open stretch of water in southern England, by that most loathsome of illegal immigrants, the Canada goose (Branta canadensis). These powerful, strut- ting creatures — well is that aggressive mar- tial tread called the goose-step — are the giant rats of the air. Half a century ago there were only 2,000 in Britain. There are now more than 100,000. Their numbers double every few years. The females are fer- tile for a decade and produce six goslings annually. As the birds are monogamous and highly protective of their young, nearly all survive. They are exceptionally fierce, drive off other birds, including swans, and engage in ethnic cleansing wherever they settle. But cleansing is not the word. These geese are notorious for shitting. They eat everything in sight until they are so full they are inca- pable of flying, then start to get rid of it. They can defecate twice their body-weight every day — nasty big lumps of green slime which are highly toxic. For years, until recently, these horrible pellets have been lit- tering the banks of the Round Pond and the surrounding grass, often forming a slippery veneer of avian sewage, causing children and dogs to slither and the stomachs of all to heave. Their propensity to turn their habitat into a cloaca maxima is one reason why other, more fastidious fowl disappear when the geese push their way in.
On my walks I have often aimed a futile kick at the plump backsides of these infa- mous creatures, together with a cry of 'Get back to Ottawa!' (though poor Canadian park-keepers hate them as much as ours do). But they are cunning at evading reprisals. Repeated calls to the authorities to control these immigrants met with no response for years, those in charge fearing a 'liberal back- lash' if they attempted a cull. However, the situation became so serious that, in the early 1990s, something, albeit inadequate, was done. It is described in the chapter 'Goose Terror' in Simon Jenkins's charming volume of essays, Against the Grain (Murray, 1994). The Environment Department sent skilled hunters who attacked the geese at dawn with guns equipped with silencers. This first cull cleared St James's Park of 100 geese, according to Jenkins. But the problem was `Then a visit to an IRA arms cache.' not solved — far from it. Indeed, the worst infestation, at least at the Round Pond, has occurred since that time.
Now the park rangers, or their allies in the ministry, have had another go, and the results are evident. Not only are the borders of this magnificent stretch of water now clean and its depths less green and turbid, but the native inhabitants have returned. A dozen varieties of duck sport and dip with- out fear. The pigeons, not the best of citi- zens to be sure, but at least our own villains, are happy again. I spotted only one Canada goose, which as I watched hooted mournful- ly for its lost brethren, then, as if on cue, shat a huge olive-green turd. But the rest are gone — dead, I presume: there is no other way of getting rid of them. And in their place, as if by a miracle, is a multitude of swans. They glide ethereally on the waters, stretch their great white wings on the banks, preen their dazzlingly clean bodies on the grass, and sleep soundly there, heads tucked cosily beneath their wings, safe from the for- eign usurpers, 'breathing English air, washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home'. They are breeding again. The young swans can be seen copulating, or trying to — a noisy, splashy, awkward, hilarious process — with other fledglings crowding around to see the fun. They are back where they belong in the most famous pond in the country, which has indeed become a Swan Lake.
You can draw any moral from this you please. Personally, I rejoice to see the poW- ers-that-be tackle a notorious problem' which all who know about it agree must be dealt with, in a swift, ruthless, daring and efficacious manner, and to hell with the ent" ics. Just for once, those in charge have acted with authority. It is so rare nowadays that one is profoundly surprised, shocked almost, delightfully bemused. Did they really get uPd at dawn, with silencers on their guns, an simply shoot the brutes? It almost beggars belief, in an age when chief constables are appointed for their knowledge of sociology, when a parent cannot punish a child for fear of the European Court of Human Rights' and a man out with his dog is liable to be sent to prison. Pressure groups of all kinds' representing nobody but rich backers, 11°r malty conspire to prevent any vigorous action whatever. But here is an exception to r the rule of cowardice which is ruining our land. As Peter Pan, the Ariel of Kensington Gardens, says, 'Clap your hands!'
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