“There were two types of killings,” he says. “Some were bloody. They’d leave the bodies on the ground.”

Others, he explains, were less overt—poisonings, or surreptitious slayings. There have been 10 so far this year, he says. All have taken place in this same locale.

LaTrémouille crosses the clearing and gestures with his hand.

“The leader-in-training was shot to death, his body mutilated,” he says. He had only recently adopted an infant whose own mother had disappeared abruptly.

“There he is,” La Trémouille cries proudly, pointing. “We call him Junior.”

The twice orphaned two-year-old struts confidently across the sparse grass and hisses at a companion. He is a white goose, one of three species to live in the small green area just downstream of the Boston University bridge—a habitat that has been intentionally destroyed, LaTrémouille says, by local development programs attempting to clear the nesting area. He blames them for what he believes has been the systematic killing of the white geese since 1998.

LaTrémouille has become the leader of a Cambridge enclave of advocacy for the geese. He condemns what he describes as the past ambivalence of Cambridge’s elected leaders on the issue, and the this summer, he is organizing an effort to take part in government himself.

LaTrémouille, who regularly publishes a newsletter called Mother Goose News, will run on an environmental platform centered on his beloved geese, accusing the council of acting weakly and ineffectually in cases of environmental injustice.

“I don’t see a single councillor who is fit to be reelected,” he says. “I’m seriously considering getting the attorney general in here to help deal with a lot of the major destruction.”

The Field

Winters says he expects most of the contenders not to garner enough votes to win a council position.

In the wake of a council term that Winters says has effectively lacked major controversy, he expects to find little overturn among the existing council members.

Nonetheless, Winter considers long-time mid-Cambridge neighborhood leader John Pitkin, who quietly led the charge against Harvard’s plan to build a tunnel beneath Cambridge Street, a formidable contender.

Winters says Pitkin—who narrowly lost a 2001 bid—is the one non-incumbent nominee who could walk away from this election with a seat on the council.

“Of all the incumbents or challengers, he probably has the longest record for public service,” Winters says.