The trails at Shoreline are caked with goose droppings. Thousands of Canadian geese call this place their home, and they never leave.

There was a time when Canadian geese would migrate twice a year. But at Shoreline, visitors feed them sandwich crusts until they’re too fat to fly.

No wonder they don’t want to migrate 1400 miles back to Canada. There’s no free food in Canada and besides, Canada sucks.

That’s how animals became domesticated. Humans had food, wild animals came for the scraps, and the ones who could play nice with people got more food. As generations passed, the most docile and stupid animals made docile and stupid offspring.

Useless yappy dogs were once gray wolves, chickens were once jungle pheasants, and the ham sandwich that I ate for lunch was once a wild boar. By depending on humans as a source of free food, wild animals lost the gravel in their gut and the spit in their eye.

Give a man a wheelchair, and he’ll learn to be a cripple. Give a fisherman enough fish, and he’ll forget how to fish.

If you want to take away a person’s resourcefulness and scrap, give him a salary and health insurance and cushy benefits. Make sure there’s free food at the workplace so he comes to trust the employer. Domesticate him, make him docile and stupid.

If you want to make a man forget how to think, make sure he never goes hungry.