Photo and History: Bumpy, Junior, Buddy and Buddy's mate; the killing and Iowa's part; "neutrality" and heartless starvation.

This photo was taken in Spring 2001. It is copied from the website of the Charles River White Geese and is copyright 2001 Friends of the White Geese, copied by permission.

The gander to the right is Bumpy, long time the leader of the gaggle. He is clearly a China Goose and had a lot of class.

The other two geese are his son Buddy and Buddy's mate.

The baby is Junior. Junior was orphaned at a tiny age as part of the killings in 2001. He was adopted by Buddy and Buddy's mate. The threesome are the way the adults protect the babies. The adults very subtly create a wall beyond which humans very nicely are kept.

Bumpy is fulfilling a role commonly done in the gaggle. Three adults care for each baby, the mother, the father and the baby sitter, Bumpy in this case.

Junior imprinted on Bumpy and followed him everywhere.

In July 2001, I was doing a visibility at the entrance to the Destroyed Nesting Area. Two youths came yelling to me that they had found an injured goose. She had been stabbed. I called Marilyn to get help.

During the confusion, I realized that Junior was standing next to me and that there was no wall protecting him. I looked around and I realized that Bumpy was not to be seen.

Bumpy's abused and very dead body was pulled out of the Charles River with taping by a Channel 4 camerman on the scene. This report led Channel 4's Evening News.

A number of other members of the gaggle had been beaten including Brown Beauty.

The goose who had been stabbed, Iowa, was missing for several days.

During the memorial service for Bumpy a friend showed me the injured goose on the water next to the BU Bridge in the Destroyed Nesting Area.

Iowa hopped around on one leg at least until the following November when she started to use the injured leg. She must have been quite young at the time, perhaps a year old. She is an Emden, not distinguishable from other Emdens except that, for several years, we could identify her by her hurt leg.

She is probably by now fully healed.

Junior was orphaned for the second time during a very young life.

The memorial service was headlined in the Cambridge Chronicle.

The Cambridge City Council was belligerently "neutral" in spite of pleas for humanity. In December 1999, the Cambridge City Council had voted for a starvation attack against the Charles River White Geese which attack started at Magazine Beach with the walling off for use as food in September 2004.

The starvation attack was conducted on two fronts. Before September 2004, the City of Cambridge did a sewerage project in the other half of the habitat of the Charles River White Geese. They left walls barring access from the river after that project, so that as of about September 2004, all food in their habitat was denied the Charles River White Geese by a heartless City of Cambridge and a heartless DCR/MDC.

Robert J. La Trémouille
Post Office Box 391412
Cambridge, MA 02139-0015
617-491-7181, Cell: 617-283-7649

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Harvard Square Wasted Expenditures

Sent from Marilyn to Cambridge Chronicle, 10/28/05, printed in Chronicle's 11-3-05 Edition:

To the Editor:

Regarding the $3.5 million redo of Harvard Square reported in the October 27 Chronicle, I remember a meeting of the Harvard Square Design Committe I attended several years ago. It was held by the Cambridge Development Department in Harvard Square at my dinnertime, but I made a point to eat early and attend.

The artist chosen to provide "world-class" public art on Palmer Street spoke, as did Susan Clippinger, Assistant City Manager for Traffic and Parking. The upshot was that Harvard Square needed a New York artist with an international reputation for Class, and that all traffic needed to be rethought because of safety reasons.

When I asked Ms. Clippinger about statistics on accidents in Harvard Square she said they were available but she didn't trust them. Since she immediately backpedaled, and since the Harvard Square intersections don't show up on the Chronicle's annual "most dangerous intersections" list, I assume the safety statistics are inconvenient for the city's purposes here: the glossy redo is to boost further the Square's ascent to Very Upscale. With the loss of establishments like Brine's and the Brattle Theater because of rent increases, it's hard to sympathize with property owners who will benefit from $3.5 million of our tax dollars.

What most struck me about the meeting, though, was the groaning board of sandwiches of all sorts, cookies, drinks supplied by the Development Department, possibly part of that $3.5 million budget, possibly part of the Department's regular operating expenses. Accustomed as I was to dinnertime meetings at the high school, where parents supplied bags of chips and bottles of soda, I completely missed the cue to wait and get my free dinner while listening to the best way to subsidize the Harvard Square property owners.

Yours sincerely,

Marilyn Wellons