So, the boat has new ads up.

[conuly]

A big picture of a deer with the words "This is a New Yorker" and some blurb about learning to live in the same city as deer. There's a website.

It's all probably useful advice, except every time I see that ad I feel like pointing out that all the deer on Staten Island* swam over from Jersey, which sorta makes them quintessential "not really New Yorkers". The ones in the Bronx walked over from Westchester, so same deal. I recognize that I'm saying this from Staten Island, but still!

* Except the ones in the zoo.

Comments

[gingicat]

Hey, now I know two fannish (I presume you're fannish since you found me through ysabetwordsmith) people on Staten Island!

[conuly]

I'm less fannish than a lot of fannish people, but I try :)

[redbird]

They're New Yorkers if they aren't planning to swim back: the city is full of people, and nonhuman animals, who were born somewhere else.

I think my mother still thinks of herself as a New Yorker, despite a couple of decades' residence in another country, and she was born in Germany.

[conuly]

They're New Yorkers if they aren't planning to swim back: the city is full of people, and nonhuman animals, who were born somewhere else.

Please, at best they're transplants :P

Edit: And for all I know, they do swim/walk back home on a regular basis. LOL, that's an image - commuter deer!

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Apparently some of them do do commute:



Deer are lovely, but they're a major driving hazard, and also they nom down one's roses, tulips, and fruit trees. When I lived in Port Townsend, sometimes a whole herd of them would hang out in my back yard: so charming, but so destructive.

Gray wolves would cull them, but we have no gray wolves here any more, and there's a lot of opposition to re-introducing them. I guess that's not an option for Staten Island either, and the plan of sterilizing all the bucks sounds impractical (http://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf/2016/05/experts_think_citys_staten_isl.html). So, alas, some of them are just going to have to be shot.

[conuly]

Nobody even likes it when we shoot the Canadian geese that hang out at airports all winter and never migrate and which are a serious hazard to airplanes. And geese are vicious bastards. I don't think anybody is happy about the idea of shooting deer... especially if it has to happen in a more or less urban area.

(Actually, the best thing to do is close down the Greenbelt and probably the new Fresh Kills park to everybody but hunters for a few days each year and then just have those hunters go to town, but.)

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

I wasn't thinking 'hunting', but rather, 'culling', which is where they're baited in with food and one professional marksman shoots the does. The bucks don't matter; they're not the ones dropping fawns. Having hunters running about in such a small urban area sounds like a recipe for disaster.

Too bad about the geese, but they are a menace, and they're also a lot of food.

[conuly]

Weeeeeelll... Staten Island is, of course, urbanized... but we also are over 1/3 parkland, some of it quite extensive and not "gardened" parks. If I were a deer, I think I'd rather be there than on the mean streets. We actually *could* feasibly close off the parks for a few days.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Close them off, yes, but open them up to public hunting? That's a whole other can of worms. A bullet from a deer rifle can travel as much as three miles, and I'll bet most of your parkland is less than three miles from anyone's house.