Cap, that's a waterfowl nesting box....years ago, my Dad and I became charter members of a waterfowl induction program....at that time, there were very few Canada geese here in MS....we, and 12 other landowners in the area purchased about 50 breeding pairs of Canada geese from the Minnesota DOW, in an effort to introduce them here, and hopefully, get a population of them started....as you know, geese mate for life, so we had to purchase breeding pairs.

Actually, I came up with that nesting box idea, and it proved quite successful....rather than just releasing the geese out into the wild, these boxes, mounted over the water, provided the geese a safe haven from predators on the land....they are constructed of commercial-grade 30 gal. plastic pickle barrels, cut in half, which even snakes can't slither up because of the slick plastic coating....also, each one has a small cypress sun deck(for lack of a better word) for the adults to sit and keep an eye on their goslings.

Actually, the program was TOO successful....there are so many geese here, now, that they are nearly classified as pests, especially for the catfish farmers....the geese swim behind the feed trucks, which dispense and blow out the catfish feed into the ponds to feed the catfish....the feed floats on the surface, and even a small group of the geese can eat up the feed faster than the catfish....they have gotten so aggressive that they will actually run off the catfish from the feed.

Now, most catfish farmers have depredation permits, and it didn't take long for the geese to learn the hard way, not to follow the feed trucks.

Other than being one of God's beautiful creations to watch and study, they aren't worth a dau'um for much else....they sheeit everywhere, and aren't worth a day'um for eating....I tried cooking one a few years ago, and boiled that day'um thing for about 24 hours....stunk up the house, and the meat came out, looking like a big ball of rubber liver....I threw it out across the back yard, and it rolled all the way to the fence, and never fell apart....the dogs played with for a while, but never ate it.