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CALGARY — One day this week, a resident of Fort Macleod, Alta., was out walking in a field on the outskirts of town when he happened upon a heap of five dead Canadian geese.

Yet hunting season was over. And, besides, the bodies and bones had been left in the heap.

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Police were baffled.

“Personally, I don’t know what would be the draw to them,” said RCMP Const. Jason Smith. The Canada goose is not the most beloved of birds, but who could they have been bothering on a day that recorded a -30C windchill?

Who would want to kill the lovely, iconic, squawking Canada goose? The list of suspects is a long one, and spans the continent.

On Thursday, more than two dozen Canada geese – and a few mallard ducks as well — were found dead, ‘‘their necks broken and the carcasses thrown over a cliff,’’ according to one newspaper report, in a Cleveland, Ohio, area park.

The Canada goose has attained the title of the foulest of the fowl. Their populations have grown exponentially in recent decades, fed on the ever-growing mass of perfect green lawns, golf courses, parks and farm fields left bereft of natural predators by sprawling human development. Considered a public safety threat for their profligate, germ-incubating guano, and their habit of flying into airplane turbines, the critters have been castigated and culled. They can be ornery creatures; they will attack humans, and are big enough to do some damage: An epic battle between a man and a goose in the Toronto area — which ended with the goose chasing the man — was a minor viral hit last year.