A few months ago, the Finnish nation was proclaimed for the eighth time the happiest country on the planet. Then we saw that nothing is perfect, because while it happened, the United States landed to prepare them to the next battle for the Arctic. And between one thing and another, summer has reached its beaches. As always, it will not be very long, and this year is accompanied by an exorbitant amount of excrement.
Brief and disputed. The New York Times told this week. In a country where summer lasts just two months and the sun becomes a scarce good, every warm day is almost like a miracle. Helsinki, like the rest of the country, lives those weeks with intensity: crowded beaches, whole bicycle families and citizens anxious to take advantage of temperatures that in any other place would seem soft, but that exceed historical records here.
However, in that space of evasion an unexpected intruder has appeared: the barnaclas geese, robust birds and gregarious that have colonized parks, avenues and, above all, the beaches of the capital. Its massive presence (more than 5,000 accounted for in the area last summer) has transformed the outdoor life into a constant surveillance exercise, where walkers must measure each step so as not to sink into excrements that accumulate in surprising amounts.
The daily excrement. The problem, although an anecdotal in appearance, directly affects the enjoyment of a summer that the Finns consider sacred. On the beaches, before extending the towel you have to check the ground, the Volleyball players pray not to land Bruces in a brown pond, and the parents watch with anguish that their young children do not confuse the manure with sand or grass.
The Times counted that, in the parks, the lawn is upholstered with feces that are embedded in the soles, and in the central avenues the geese cross pedestrians with the same naturalness as the beatles very Beatles in Abbey Road. The figures illustrate the magnitude of the challenge: on some beaches, the maintenance personnel collects more than 20 kg of excrement per day, a volume that requires whole crews of seasonal workers, multiplied in the last decade.
Failed innovations. For years, the Helsinki City Council has rehearsed methods to contain the plague. They tried to mix the stool with the sand, but the water ended up contaminated. They used recordings of sea eagles to scare birds, but the geese got used to it soon. It was even studied to hire trained dogs, as other cities do, although they were too expensive and little available.
This summer’s great hope was a machine designed by the maintenance team itself. A kind of sieve with wheels, similar to a manual corteped, which had to separate the feces from the sand. The problem? In practice it was heavy and ineffective in wet soils, and ended up relegated to a warehouse. In the end, the most reliable resource remains the most rudimentary: shovel, gum gloves and infinite patience.
Inevitable coexistence. The battle against geese, however, is limited by Finnish legislation and ethics: urban hunting or massive sacrifice is not allowed, such as in Canada or California, where transfers or culeing has been chosen. In Helsinki, geese are not only a nuisance, but already part of the summer landscape, inserted in the urban imaginary and the daily routine of its inhabitants.
In fact, the workers who collect the manure find some serenity in the repetitive task (although the smell persecutes them later). The reality is that, in a country where summer is too short to waste it, the Finns seem to accept this uncomfortable invasion as a Price to pay to enjoy its beaches.
With humor and stoicism, they have assumed that between the sun, water and sand there will always be a third guest: the omnipresent goose … and its inevitable trace.
Image | JIP
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