Speaker’s corner
FROM time to time I am asked (in what capacity I am never sure) how to humanely get rid of “Indian mynas”, now called “common mynas”. Nobody is sure how this alien species got to South Africa. A common belief is that a sailor arrived in Durban from Madras in the 1890s and, having failed to sell half-a-dozen he had in a cage, released them.
The authoritative two-volume The Atlas of Southern African Birds, published by BirdLife Africa, says the mynahs are the descendants of a subspecies native to Burma and Assam and could have been accidentally introduced by bird dealers around 1890.
They have since multiplied with biblical enthusiasm.
They are now entrenched in KwaZuluNatal and, although “generally regarded as an unwanted nuisance”, they are becoming “a permanent member of (our) avifauna”.
But the mynac is not our only problem bird. There’s a bigger, fatter one – the Egyptian goose.
Despite its title the bird is native to South Africa. Because of the growing number of farm dams, ponds and lakes and the fact that people feed them, the goose, a grazer, is multiplying to such an extent it is destroying the beauty and ecology of municipal lakes mainly by denuding their grassy banks and creating a reeking stratum of you-know-what.
My friend and former colleague, Peter Sullivan, an avid birder, was recently asked by a fellow golfer, Hans Enderle, retired executive chairman of City Lodge Hotels, how to get rid of Egyptian geese that are damaging golf courses.
Peter found that little research exists on goose management so he began researching it himself. He concluded that the best way was to shoot them, adding: “I’m thinking seriously of getting The Naked Chef involved.”
I was interested to hear this because I had similar thoughts regarding the geese at our local lake but their numbers diminished without a shot being fired.
There will, of course, be people who will object to shooting so it might be necessary to first shoot the well-meaning people who feed the geese. If that doesn’t work, then we’ll just have to shoot the geese themselves and to hell with public reaction.
Seriously, they could be regularly harvested and Peter, in his well-researched dissertation, includes a formula for doping the geese with drug-impregnated grain so they can be harvested while anaesthetised.
He suggests twice-yearly “Goose Days” when we all cook geese and prizes are offered for the best dish. The carcasses could be sold to local restaurateurs and the proceeds go to Birdlife Africa before they rescind Peter’s and my membership in a drumhead ceremony.
Peter offers alternatives to culling. One is to surround a lake with reeds because geese, being grazers, prefer grassy banks. But that spoils the aesthetics of lakes as well as their recreational and picnic value – and golfers hate reed beds.
He gave me a marvellous recipe from El Sayed’s restaurant. One, he discovered, “was crisp-skinned, glazed in pomegranate and honey, and served with vegetables and dried fruits that might have been known to the ancient Egyptians – turnips, zucchini, daikon cooked in hibiscus, dates, apricots, bamboo shoots, eggplant, yam, carrots, leeks. The goose had been marinated for 36 hours in a heady mixture of cinnamon sticks, nutmeg, lemon juice, cilantro, allspice, cinnamon, bay leaves, parsley, sea salt and cumin.
“El Sayed deep-fried a taro leaf because they could not find lotus leaves, which would have been more traditional, and presented a serving of goose meat atop it.
“The goose fat was used to prepare succulent confits of quail and duck. El Sayed also concocted a delicate soup of goose broth and dried fruit with slices of goose liver in it.”
Bang! Bang! Honk, honk. Sizzle, sizzle. Goose problem solved.