SICK driving antics are being blamed for the bloody deaths of four geese found on a city centre York street.

The mangled bodies of the unfortunate birds were found feet apart in Clifford Street by York street cleaning chief Paul Willey as he was doing his rounds at about 4.45am last Friday.

Paul, who has been blitzing York's streets for the past 15 years, said he had often found animals killed on the roads, but had never before come across so many birds slaughtered at once.

"It looked as if someone had gone down and just ploughed into them," said Paul.

"I've seen a lot of dead geese. This is the first time I've seen four geese dead in a row.

"I can understand one being killed as road kill, but not four. I maintain they were clobbered by a vehicle. This is pure, unadulterated, cold-blooded murder of animals.

"Normally, I see people stopping and letting the geese across the road. They don't do anybody any harm. They waddle across the road - just wait five minutes, you don't just kill them. I hope whoever did this can sleep well at night."

After coming across the carnage, which included one beheaded goose, Paul, an occasional Evening Press columnist, carefully bagged up the birds and sent them away to be disposed of.

Today police said such incidents were "unusual".

"If someone has done it deliberately, it's obviously pretty callous," said a spokeswoman. "I've never heard of anybody contacting us about geese being maliciously run over.

"The geese all come out when the clubbers get kicked out. It's because drinks and food are thrown away. If members of the public disposed of their food in proper receptacles, it might stop them coming around and looking for stuff".

The death of the geese was today condemned by the RSPCA, but spokeswoman Heather Holmes said it was more likely they were caused by thoughtless, rather than malicious, driving.

"It could just be an accident, but even so it's still caused by carelessness," she said.

"Unfortunately there are a minority of motorists who are so impatient. It's not the first time I've heard of this happening in York.

"I can't imagine that somebody would do that deliberately, that somebody would be so sick.

"If people are driving too fast, they just don't see them. If you've got four birds sitting together or standing together in a road, and somebody is driving too fast, they will take out all the birds."

She urged anyone spotting motorists killing geese to take down their number plate details and report them either to the RSPCA or to the police.

Updated: 10:23 Thursday, December 08, 2005