Shoo! Dogs hired to rid us of the scourge of bird poop!

It seems like poop of various sorts may be a recurring theme here on the blog. This morning I heard a story on the radio about a local company Wild Goose Chase that uses border collies to help shoo wild geese from green spaces surrounding office parks, golf courses, etc. In addition, a few years ago the City of Chicago hired border collies to chase sun bathing seagulls from the lakefront beaches. One of the main reasons the geese and seagulls need shooing away? Poop! Among other things, the city concluded that sea gull poop contributes to high e coli counts which result in closed beaches during the hot Chicago summers.

Here in northern Illinois we have quite a problem with Canadian Geese. Guess what, they are not seasonal residents anymore. They are year round residents. Or the ones that actually fly south in the winter have decided Canada is too far away when it's time to head back up north. They probably don't have such nice lawns there, what with all that frozen tundra, so the geese stop here in Illinois. Wherever they set up home, they leave a lot of gross poop that makes the area they occupy unsanitary and unusable by humans.

It seems that Canadian Geese are especially attracted to wide open green spaces because it provides clear sight lines and thus potential predators are more visible. I don’t know what kind of predators they would have in an office park or a golf course, although a coyote was spotted in a Quizno’s restaurant in the Loop one day last spring, so I guess that is a likely candidate.

During my lunch hour last summer I would sometimes walk around Chicago’s Grant Park and the old band shell area. Since the area is no longer used for concerts (we've got a new band shell), it has literally gone to the geese. The whole area is just disgusting – and very slippery!

Anyway, a number of firms have popped up in the area that use dogs, particularly border collies, to chase the geese away. This is great exercise for the dogs. For example, the job of chasing sea gulls occurred every half hour, about four to six hours a day, seven days a week for at least a month. Chasing the birds is a seemingly humane way to shoo them away. But you have to wonder how long it is before the geese or the gulls return when the dog isn’t there anymore. Sounds like full time employment to me.