How Did Stamford Animal Control Catch a Goose on the Loose in Danger?

A Canadian goose on the loose in Stamford that Stamford Animal Care & Control Shelter Officers had witnessed tangled in a fishing net was chased around for about a week before they could finally catch it, according to shelter director Laurie Hollywood. 

Hollywood said the netting wrapped around the goose was not prohibiting its flying capabilities, which made corraling the animal in West Beach Park, where he was spending most of his time, much more difficult.

"It was some sort of fishing line wrapped around his legs," Hollywood said. "He could still fly. We tried a few times to catch him and failed."

Hollywood handed the task to Officer Stendhal Jean-Louis, who she described as the Stamford shelter's wildlife-capture extraordinaire. On Thursday, Jean-Louis came up with a plan and Hollywood supplied him with the ammunition—plenty of bread.

The goose arrived at his usual hang out to find that scrumptious treat laid out along the ground in what would appear, to those with basic cognative skills, to be a suspiciously straight line leading to an area just at the rear of a black van marked Stamford Animal Patrol.

When the goose approached the motherlode of bread laid out with nary an animal control officer in site, he did not realize a net laid beneath the bread. Jean-Louis, who was hiding underneath the van so as not to give his position away from the flighty suspect, scooped the goose up in the net and rescued it from its bindings.