There's nothing worse than feeling the poultry is laughing at you. After that, what is there but despair? If he's lucky, John A. Sanders will be able to use that reasoning when he explains to a judge what drove him to stomp five goslings to death and critically wound an adult goose in a fit of rage.

Sanders had been walking in a wooded Attleboro, Massachusetts, area where Canadian geese are known to stop every spring for a bit of swimming. Police say Sanders was startled when a goose hissed at him, causing him to fall in the mud.

"Angered by his fall," reads the police report, "he began his rampage." According to a witness, Sanders chased and kicked the geese. The witness says Sanders raced about screaming, eventually stopping to jump up and down. Police found five goslings stomped flat. A wounded adult goose was later euthanized.

Out on $600 (U.S.) bail, Sanders faces six charges of felony animal cruelty and one count of disorderly conduct.

» Scott Saxon