It was hard to be a goose last week along Lindsay Lane.

It’s not a healthy place for fowl that congregate around Lake Ida under normal circumstances because every now and then they get afflicted with travel lust and decide to cross the road.

Perhaps these fowl should have asked chickens why they cross the road –– or even a possom –– why they take strange notions to cross roads.

But these geese for whatever reason decide it’s time to cross the road. If they’re lucky, motorists will risk being rear-ended by other drivers and stop mid-traffic and wait patiently for the geese to waddle across Lindsay Lane.

Other times, the geese are not so lucky. Some driver might be texting or on a cell phone or have their minds on pressing world or family events and run clean over a goose. And then it becomes a moot point as to why the goose was crossing the road in the first place.

But now, there lurks other dangers to goosedom. They still might be under federal wildlife protection, but that’s just on paper.

The feds are discretely looking the other way, and if residents, tired of their untidy habits and prolific breeding (that of the geese, not of the feds), decide it’s time that these birds take their last waddle up Heaven’s Highway, then it becomes a matter strictly between the goose and the hacked-off resident.

It is the ultimate relocation program.

A difference of opinion on the correct solution to troublesome geese sparked a neighborhood controversy around Lake Ida last week.

I, myself, have had some experience in this area. About five years ago I lived one street over from these mean streets, and while I profess to like watching the antics of wildlife, there were times I had a fleeting thought about tingling their backsides with a pellet gun.

The geese would visit my back yard to gather seeds that had fallen from my birdfeeder. While picking up the seeds, the geese would pluck up a few clumps of Zoysia grass. To add insult to injury, the geese would poop on the sidewalk before embarking on the long waddle back to Lake Ida.

And then, as though to contribute to the delinquency of minors, the adults would bring their babies with them on these grass-plucking/poop raids of the Middleton back yard.

The geese usually visited at breakfast time. I would glance up from a bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats, burst out the back door, swinging a broom, screaming, nightgown flapping, slippers slapping my heels.

The geese would waddle away somewhat faster than usual amid a sound suspiciously like laughter.

I never learned if the chuckling was coming from geese or neighbors.