Flock of 50 geese living at golf course euthanized

“They just friggin’ gassed them, they carbon (dioxide) poisoned them,” he said. “Why didn’t they just put them in a truck and take them to Iowa?”

“Usually, by the time we get involved, people have tried a number of methods,” said USDA spokeswoman Carol Bannerman. “My understanding is that the golf course had tried sprays, repellants and dogs.”

Officials from the agency’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service arrived at the course June 20. They herded the geese into trucks, drove them to an undisclosed location and euthanized them with carbon dioxide.

 Hibbard and his neighbor, Larry Bryant, the recent past president of the Tiger Point Village Homeowners Association, said the geese had become a nuisance.

“They had a negative influence on the golf,” Bryant said. “You’d walk up to the greens to putt and it was not good at all.”

Not even Santa Rosa County’s Francis M. Weston Audubon Society was willing to champion the goose cause.