When a 21-year-old student illegally dumped the carcasses of 33 dead snow geese in a wooded area near a Columbia playground, he did so to return them to the “circle of life.”

That?s what Edward D. Dillon, of the village of Kings Contrivance in Columbia, told a Howard County District Court Judge Alice Clark on Tuesday, telling the judge he hoped foxes and raccoons would eat the birds.