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Township rounds up Delavan Lake geese early this morning

Photo

Photo by Dan Plutchak

The USDA Wildlife Service rounded up geese along Delavan Lake in Delavan Township in the early morning June, 30, 2010. File photo.

Taffy Armstrong, with the Lake Delavan Highlands Association, sweeps up goose droppings near the beach Wednesday after the town of Delavan's goose roundup. Dan Plutchak/staff.

DELAVAN TOWNSHIP -- The controversial goose roundup on Delavan Lake was completed early today before most people even knew it had begun.

A crew of about a dozen from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Service spent about two hours early today rounding up hundreds of geese from beaches and private property around the lake.

Some groups opposed the program, but members of the Delavan Town Board said they had exhausted all other options for keeping the beaches and parks free of goose droppings.

Residents who watched the roundup this morning said the process was humane.

Lake Delavan Highlands Association President Barb Smith and her husband, Bob, live directly across from the association's private beach on the west end of Delavan Lake.

"It was very humane," Bob Smith said. "They gently gathered them up and put them in cages. It was actually more humane than I thought it would be."

Workers formed a circle around the geese, then gently picked them up and put them in cages that were loaded on to a truck.

The geese molt this time of year, and many are unable to fly, which made the process much easier.

The crew didn't pick the geese up by their necks, Smith said, and the whole process took no more than a half hour.

"They (the geese) didn't seem to be bothered by it at all," Smith said.

On the other side of the lake, at the Town of Delavan Community Park, the roundup was completed by 8:30 a.m.

The adult geese will be processed into meat for food pantries. Juvenile geese will be processed for use at animal shelters and sanctuaries.

The town budgeted $4,000 from the Delavan Lake Sanitary District for the service.

Read more in Thursday's Walworth County Gazette, online in the Gazette e-edition HERE, or check WalworthCountyToday.com after 4 p.m. Thursday for the latest.