If faced with a choice between geese and e-bikes, I choose death by quicksand. Seriously: They both annoy the hell outta me, and if that makes me a curmudgeon, like a good friend and loyal reader has noted to me on more than one occasion, then so be it. (But actually I’m not a curmudgeon. I’m just realistic. Everyone else is too happy and bright-side looking. I’m simply pointing out the truth about how things are going downhill. It’s not my fault the world is full of annoyances and people don’t have common sense anymore. I don’t complain; I make observations. If that makes me seem grumpy, well, that’s everyone else’s problem for not seeing things clearly.) {Editor’s Note: Holy (bleep), he is a curmudgeon.} Anyway: Geese and e-bikes. Two of my least favorite things running right now. I bring these up together because of a wonderful story I read over at Advance Media, in which a 30-year old Hoboken man was arrested for — wait for it — purposefully hitting a goose with his e-bike. He was charged with both cruelty to animals and was cited for riding his e-bike on a walkway. One of these should be punishable with jail, the other should get a medal to go with it. Let’s tackle the geese first: Listen, remember a few weeks back when Trump repeated the “they’re eating dogs and cats in Springfield” nonsense? Yeah, well, he doubled down on it, saying that Haitian immigrants are also eating the town’s geese. First off: You ever try and catch a goose? Good luck. Secondly, if it’s true — spoiler alert, it’s not — I say bring those Haitian immigrants to New Jersey and let ‘em go bananas trapping, killing, and eating our geese. Here’s a fun didja know: Due to habitat loss and over-hunting, there were about zero Canada geese in New Jersey by the 1960s Then the conservationists got involved, re-introduced the species, and by the 2000s, the Canada goose population exploded in New Jersey. Today, there are some 80,000 of ‘em all over the state, though, with their poop, it seems like there are 80,000,000,000,000 of them. Plus they’re pissy, and are prone to getting sucked into airplane engines, and they’re crop destroyers. As for natural predators once they hit adulthood? Yeah, none, except us humans. We need more e-bikers taking out geese. Clearly. But, on the flip side … perhaps we need more geese taking out e-bikers. They’re almost as bad a scourge as the damn geese. (OK fine, I’m a curmudgeon. I wear it proud.) They’re too damn fast, you know? There I am, in my car, ready to make a turn, and I see someone on a bike. “I’ve got all the time in the world to make this turn,” I’d think to myself, and then, whammo, the “bike” — the e-bike — is one me quicker than the speed of light. Plus, they’re quiet. Maybe I’m taking a walk, and then — whoosh — some e-biker is on me quicker than … I already used the speed of light thing, but I’m gonna use it again. And for whatever reason — like the Hoboken guy above — people who ride these things seem to be magnetized to the sidewalk. How about this: No. Get off the sidewalk. All told, I’m torn between my hatreds. I say we take all the geese and all the e-bikers, put ‘em in an locked arena-like setting, and let nature take its course.