Fowl

The city of Laurel had taken it long enough. Sure, the geese were pretty to look at, but the pounds and pounds of droppings they left behind -- on picnic tables, on playground equipment, on rental boats -- turned the lakefront into a mess. Here at Granville Gude Park, a 29-acre oasis tucked behind an apartment complex and the Burlington Coat Factory, options were limited. Hunting isn't feasible in these parts, let alone legal. Residents would certainly scoff at any plan to euthanize the animals.

Delaware went another day without a new case of avian influenza, but New Jersey health officials said yesterday that the virus has popped up in four live bird markets there. The virus, which makes regular appearances at markets with live poultry, is less troubling for New Jersey because the state does not have a commercial broiler chicken industry. But officials in Delaware - which has the top broiler-producing county in the nation, Sussex - have wondered if the Kent County, Del., operation that first tested positive for the flu last week picked up the virus while delivering chickens to a New York live market.

PETELINSKAYA, Russia - After competing in the Cold War, the arms race and the space race, the United States and Russia are still locked in an epic competition. This time it's over who can raise plump, affordable chickens. Vladimir A. Sedikh, deputy director of production at the Petelinskaya Chicken Farm here, recently slipped a white lab coat over his suit and escorted visitors through a gleaming, year-old processing plant. From the point that the clucking chickens were hung up on the conveyor belt until the machinery spat out packaged broiler parts, the birds were rarely touched by human hands.

If you still are running around making last-minute Thanksgiving plans, you might be interested to know that you can still get an 11-pound turkey for free. All you have to do is win a race. This morning, the Towson Family YMCA is playing host to the ninth annual Turkey Trot 5K race. Top overall winners, as well as the top finishers in each age group, will receive a turkey. Registration begins at 7 a.m. and costs $30. The Towson YMCA is also offering a 2K Walk/Fun Run and Child Watch activities for kids.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service approved a plan yesterday to allow Maryland officials to shoot about 3,000 mute swans over the next 10 years, a move they call necessary because the beautiful birds cause too much environmental damage. State wildlife biologists and technicians will begin shooting about 60 swans a week once they secure a federal permit in the next few days. Officials at the Maryland Department of Natural Resources say the shootings -- halted temporarily by a federal lawsuit in May -- will help control an invasive species that eats millions of pounds of aquatic grasses vital to the health of the Chesapeake Bay. "Assuming we can get cooperation from wind, weather and tide, we'll begin operating in the field as soon as possible," said Jonathan McKnight, associate director of habitat conservation for DNR's Wildlife and Heritage Service.

LIMPING OUT OF town after a mercifully brief meeting, the lame-duck Congress leaves as its chief legacy yet another lesson on why such post-election sessions should be avoided. Consider its shameful record: hasty approval of a massive new bureaucracy through legislation larded up with giveaways to well-heeled special interests, but apparently not even coal in the stockings of jobless workers due to run out of unemployment benefits a few days after Christmas. Ho. Ho. Ho. Re-elected lawmakers probably figure voters won't remember by the time they face the polls again.

The anticipated lifting of the ban on U.S. export of chicken to Russia will be delayed for at least a day or two, officials announced yesterday. Russian officials had agreed last week to lift the ban by yesterday if the U.S. fulfilled certain conditions, including tougher controls on veterinary documents and measures against companies that exported salmonella-tainted chicken. Talks between the two nations dragged late into the night in Moscow, but negotiators failed to reach an agreement before the midnight deadline for lifting the ban. The Russians said they needed more time to study the information provided by the United States to prove that its poultry is safe to eat. "We are translating 300 pages of data provided by the Americans," Russian Agriculture Minister Alexei Gordeyev said in a statement in Moscow.

WARRENTON, Va. - Dr. William Sladen has explored Antarctica, studied waterfowl in Siberia and taught Canada geese to fly behind an ultralight plane. The five young swans splashing on the edge of a pond here are his latest adventure. To the untrained eye, the birds waddling around central Virginia's Airlie Center look like the common mute swan, which is considered a pest in some parts and even a threat to the environment, hardly an object of intrigue for a famous wildlife researcher. But Sladen stands on the edge of the pond, rapt.

The Fairest Fowl: Portraits of Championship Chickens, photographs by Tamara Staples, text by Ira Glass (Chronicle Books, 108 pages, $14.95). No one would blame you for questioning how much grace, beauty and dignity would be likely found in individual chickens. But since 1849, there have been regular, competitive poultry exhibits in the United States -- and the history of fancy fowl goes back into the dimmest past. Tamara Staples was taken to her first show in 1988 by an uncle who raises chickens seriously.

PUBLIC LANDING - Denny Price cups a weathered hand across the bill of his camouflage hat, scanning the flat stubble of a Worcester County soybean field for a glimpse of one of Maryland's most elusive creatures. After a few moments, Price's practiced eye spots movement 300 yards away at the edge of a stand of towering pine, oak and gum trees. The dark-brown blurs are a flock of about 20 wild turkeys he had expected to find. The wily birds - who bear little resemblance to 62 million of their clumsy, overweight domestic cousins who'll end up as holiday meals this Thanksgiving - are a sight that still quickens the pulse of the 51-year-old wildlife technician and hunter.