Lay off the Canada geese!

I have long wondered if it is Globe policy to always speak of wildlife disparagingly. When I started to read Nestor Ramos’s article today (“A turkey’s lament: His goose is cooked as foul fowl thrive,’’ Metro, Nov. 23), I was overcome with relief until he, like many other Globe reporters, proclaimed Canada geese to be the scourge of the planet. In response to President Trump’s recent asinine reversal of the law regarding bringing elephant parts into the country, Gisele Bundchen stated that all wildlife is precious. We should all remember that this also applies to bears, deer, turkeys, and Canada geese. It has been proved that goose droppings do not carry diseases, and the birds are not aggressive. (The next time a Globe article reports turkeys that demolished a car or a goose that put someone in the hospital, could we please see some proof?) Stop teaching children that inconvenient wildlife should be exterminated in inhumane ways. Invest in machinery that vacuums up goose poop, and be grateful that we have these beautiful, friendly birds in our midst.

Debbie Prato

Westford

And keep your cats indoors . . .

Re “Cat-carrying coyote spawns concerns’’ (Metro, Nov. 22), where it was reported that a Newton woman became concerned after she spotted a coyote with a cat in its mouth. I wonder if she is equally concerned by the large number of cats with wild birds in their mouths. Many species of wild birds are decreasing rapidly, and a primary cause is cats. It is estimated that domestic cats kill from 1.4 to 3.7 billion birds in the lower 48 states each year. There is an easy solution to the cat-coyote problem: Keep cats indoors. It will protect a lot of wild birds as well.

Margaret Rhodes

Brookline