S STOCKTON writes: "If people don't like wildfowl they should stay away from parks with lakes and the river" (February 17).

I pay the rates, not the geese. One or two geese are quaint but, one or two hundred are a filthy menace.

The reasons the geese have been allowed to become so numerous is they save the council money on cutting the grass.

If S Stockton likes the geese so much, I suggest he takes them into his back garden.

Before he does, he, and York's councillors, should look at the gardens opposite Clifford's Tower.

This was once a pleasant area where people sat and ate their lunch. Now it is little more that a quagmire because it has been overgrazed by the geese.

If nothing is done this year to cull the geese, within the next two years the ratepayers will have to pay out thousands of pounds to have that area and the area around the law courts resurfaced.

P. Dixon,

Fulford Road,

York.

Updated: 10:00 Thursday, February 26, 2004