80-Year-Old Woman Criminally Charged For Feeding Ducks
LYNN (CBS) – A woman known as “the bird lady” is facing criminal charges for feeding the ducks, geese, and pigeons at a local pond.
Eighty-year-old Claire Butcher has been feeding the birds for 45 years at Flax, Sluice, and Goldfish Ponds in Lynn.
In the entire article, there's exactly one person - outside of city officials - who even vaguely talks against Butcher, and that's only to note that there is a lot of bird guano. The video reports lists surveillance camera footage of Butcher feeding the ducks - it is assumed that the cameras are in place as an anti-crime measure, but one wonders how much time was spent storing and then reviewing the footage to find video of her feeding the ducks.
It's a good thing there's no other crime in Lynn, that's for certain!
That is all.
6 comments:
You can't feed the ducks around my lake, and boy does it show. Walk along the Charles and you'll be hissed at by geese, and walk around HUGE piles of shit and destroyed grass.
But they manage to do it with just a $25 civil fine.
Works great.
If you feed them after noon they turn into assault ducks. True story.
Sad story... That is probably the ONLY pleasure that woman ever got...
Well, in real life I'm a parks supervisor, so I'm on the fence here. Sure, when you just say "80yr old woman may go to jail for feeding ducks" it sounds insane. But, in the town's defense, we aren't talking about throwing a few slices of bread to the ducks. We're talking SHOPPING CARTS full of food. Besides creating a health hazard with rats and hundreds of pounds of feces that washes into the water source, you're also depriving other taxpayers of the use of the park. Would you really bring your kids to play, walk or ride their bikes when you cant take 2 steps without stepping in poop? Worst of all, she's not even REALLY helping the ducks and geese. By supplying an easy and reliable food source, over the years she's artificially increased the population well above what could naturally be supported. When she's not there, they do like Weer'd said and destroy the rest of the park. By feeding them year round, I'm willing to bet the migratory birds no longer even migrate. There's no need for them to. Humans do a good enough job of disrupting the ecosystem, no need to go above and beyond (gawd, I sound like a treehugger!). Last, for right or wrong, she's already agreed in court to NOT go to the park, to NOT feed the animals. If she didn't agree, she should have fought it instead of agreeing and then defying the law.
If the city harvested the ducks and fed them to the homeless, there'd be no ducks to feed, problem solved, eh!
Where I used to live we had the same problem with pigeons at the local pier. The cops stopped a local from feeding them on the pier but he just moved over to the parking lot & fed them there. If you wanted to fish you had to bring cleaning supplies to wash the rail & the benches so you didn't get covered in pigeon crap. We approached the man about it & he just said " bite me I don't fish or sit on the benches".
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