Kevin Riordan: What to do with Mt. Laurel's Canada geese flock?

Colorful, noisy, ubiquitous: The Canada goose is a bit like a vuvuzela.

Those fiercely festive stadium horns, whose drone has become the unofficial World Cup soundtrack, inspire a mix of love and hate.

So, too, do the 20-pound, year-round birds who grace and deface the landscaped greens that are their pastures. Just ask the patrons of Laurel Acres Park in Mount Laurel, the latest local focal point in this ceaseless interspecies conflict.

"The geese are a nuisance," says township resident Tracey Charles, who walks the park several times a week with her infant daughter, Grace.

"They're everywhere, and their droppings are gross," adds Charles, a paralegal. "But I don't know how you humanely kill them."

Depends on how one defines humane. U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines allow for all manner of management techniques, up to and including what they refer to as "euthanasia."

Advocates for the Laurel Acres geese say this could include having the birds professionally rounded up, put in a chamber on a truck, and gassed. They've lobbied against lethal techniques for weeks, and planned to attend a township council session scheduled for last night.

"It's not like we're saying don't do anything. We're saying, use humane methods," says Mount Laurel resident Tina Wilson. "When they gas them, it's not like euthanizing a pet. You can hear their wings flapping as they suffocate. It's horrible."

Wilson and others suggest egg-addling (essentially scrambling the egg in its shell), strategic landscaping (geese like a water view), and deploying Border Collies (the birds don't find them nearly as adorable as we do).

"There's no need to kill the geese. There's a better way and it's been proven," says Sharon Pawlak of Marlton, national coordinator of the Coalition to Prevent the Destruction of Canada Geese. The nonprofit group maintains the website www.canadageesenewjersey.com.

"Look, no one wants to step in the droppings," says Pawlak, who admires the Canada goose for its intelligence and family values. As for public concern that the birds could carry diseases that endanger humans, she adds, "You're more likely to get sick from a dog or a cat."

Wilson and Pawlak say the township rarely enforces its no-feeding regulations at Laurel Acres. They also insist it has only sporadically tried to control the geese population through nonlethal means.

Last week I reached out to Township Manager Jennifer Blumenthal, evidently Mount Laurel's sole authorized spokeswoman on geese. She has been quoted elsewhere saying that euthanasia "is still an option."

I hadn't heard from her by deadline. But I empathize with anyone trying to navigate this tricky issue - especially at a time when, given what's happening to wildlife in the Gulf of Mexico, we humans might want to cut our avian friends a break.

Canada geese are handsome, noble - and so numerous in some places that the air reeks and the grass is fuzzy with down.

The good news: That's not the case, not yet, at Laurel Acres.

On a recent hot afternoon, a single goose floated in the park's picturesque pond, but droppings and feathers were abundant. People were all over the place.

"I think they're more of an attraction than a deterrent," said John Fitzpatrick, who lives in Marlton.

"It's their domain. We're the intruders," said Lynn Martorano, also of Marlton.

Thelma Gibson, visiting from Burlington Township with her four grandchildren, agreed: "We should just learn to live with them."