'Everybody loves them'

Village in a flap over safety row plan to get rid of geese

- By Jack Fifield

FEATHERS have been ruffled in a village at plans to evict beloved geese = due to health and safety fears.

White goose Lucy has been sharing Townend Pond in Stillington, North Yorks with ducks for two years, then she fell for a Chinese gander that was brought in to keep her company.

But locals in the Domesday hamlet were upset when parish councillors said the pair would be given back to their owners or rehomed at another pond “in the interests of road safety”.

A petition calling for the geese to be allowed to stay has already been signed by more than 1,200 people –

the population of the village 10 miles north of York is listed as 828.

Former field hand Betty North, 91, has lived three doors away from the roadside pond since 1956. She said: “These geese are more recent but we've had ducks for years and years, and wild geese of course.