Column: Getting Rid of a Zombie Goose

It lay gutted in the grass, entrails exposed, bugs crawling out if its sternum, over its wings, stinking.

Welcome to Stanhope.

We first saw its useless beak bobbing along Lake Musconetcong's shore. It turned up in our new backyard. Maybe some animal didn't like leftovers. Maybe it was a zombie goose.

Either way, we didn't know what to do with it. Sure, we had seen dead animals before—on Interstate 80, along Lakeside Boulevard. But when it came to getting rid of one, we were more clueless than Elmer Fudd huntin' wabbit, more confused than Bill Clinton defining "is."

First, we had to decide whether we really wanted to get rid of it. And that's not just a sick joke. It's kind of a sad truth. We'll get to that later.

My two roommates and I recently moved to Stanhope, but grew up in Hopatcong. When we tell people that, their first response is usually, "Hopatwhat?" Others ask if we mean Lake Hopatcong. Then we give those newbs the one-two: No, we're in Sussex County. Lake Hopatcong is in Morris County.

Finally, they ask if we live near the lake. Nope, not us. A filled sink was often the largest body of water we'd see each day. Suffice to say, we didn't have much experience dealing with decaying fowl.

So, after our initial shock wore off, and after I unashamedly poked it with a stick, we brainstormed. Only it was more like a brain fart. What could we do? What should we do? How does a goose taste with ketchup? We came up with three ideas.

The first: A wooden post stands in our backyard. Most mornings, there are five or six geese waddling around it, relieving themselves all over the place. Do we grab the twine from the garage, string the goose up from the post as a warning to its buddies? "Hey, we don't know why your friend is inside-out. But it happened here."

The second: Talk with Hopatcong Animal Control Officer Dale Sloat. The guy knows everything about wildlife. Name an animal—it's probably tried biting him. Since he covers Stanhope, too, as an agreement between the municipalities, maybe he'd pick it up and throw it out for us. Or maybe he'd at least tell us how to do it.

The third: Grow up. Pull plastic gloves over our hands. Clamp clothespins to our noses. Chuck it in the trash.

Since idea No. 1 was a joke, we picked No. 2. Which led us to No. 3.

If you know anything about Sloat, you know he cares. You'd think he was part animal. So after briefly describing to him our situation, skipping the gross details, he said we could dispose of it on our own. The best move would be to shovel it into the woods so it could "become part of the food chain," he said.

Great, I thought. Get it out of our backyard, let it become something's dinner. The problem: We don't have any woods. And while we could have dumped it back into Lake Musconetcong, it had come back once. We didn't want to test the zombie goose theory.

So we decided idea No. 3 was our best bet.

But it took a few days. Understand, I'm not Chuck Norris. I slept with a nightlight until age 9. We can go to Six Flags, but I'll watch safely from the ground as you test the limits a hunk of steel named after a Greek monster with snakes for hair.

Then it was gone. Two garbage bags, one shovel and a few dry heaves on a Saturday night was all it took. And the zombie goose hasn't reappeared.

Welcome to Stanhope.