Goose chasing

From a reader:

I was told that the Sycamore Park District was responsible for the pond over at Merry Oaks. I just wanted someone to know (so please direct this to the appropriate person) that the geese are awful this year. I have lived here for seven years and walk that path ALL the time. This past weekend, the geese chased me. I have always walked right by them and they have just moved out of the way and or flown into the pond. This time was different. I pulled my hamstring and my back. Something has got to be done about this. I understand that the swans are too expensive. But there are other options to keeping them away. Heron Creek has the ‘geese police’. Granted it doesn’t keep the geese AWAY all the time, but it does help. And I might add that the path is awful with their huge droppings. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but it’s becoming a problem when someone can’t walk the path without doing without harm and injury.

Alas, despite my recent LinkedIn recommendation as a blogger there is nothing I can do or write to get the geese of Merry Oaks to leave this summer. That’s not to admit to any blogging impotency because it’s molting season for geese and no blogger can stop them. Geese arrive in March for nesting and then undergo an annual molt between mid-June and late July. It’s a flightless period due to the process of new wing feathers replacing old ones and the nesting birds cannot resume flight until August. During the molt, geese congregate at ponds or lakes that provide a safe place to rest, feed and escape danger. They’re joined by fly-in non-nesting geese as a social gathering.

Mac McIntyre, Goose Blogger

I didn’t have to do the google to find this stuff out. That’s because Sal Bonanno and Lucky Spooner paid me to do that back when the Bridges of RiverMist was in the early stages of development. They had purchased swans at great expense and took great care of them at great effort and expense to intimidate the geese from nesting and then spending their molting season on the ponds and crills of RiverMist.

Unfortunately, the two swans turned out to really like geese and acted as ambassadors to welcome them in to their new digs. Sal, who personally made sure the swans were well fed, he once fell in one of the ponds tending to their needs, was not at all pleased with their performance as goose chasers.

A $700 box was purchased (before there was “an app for that”) that periodically made a loud awful noise simulating a goose suffering a violent death. It worked better than the swans so another was purchased. The sounds of geese getting killed was effective as a deterrent from the geese nesting near the ponds which begins their life cycle and ensures they’ll become residents at least for the molting season.

But that was during the start of Phase I of the Bridges of RiverMist. There were few homes and even those early “pioneers” never got comfortable with the occasional scream of a digital goose getting killed.

The most effective method of goose control is to encourage residents with dogs to walk them daily near the ponds you don’t want geese at. Just remind them to bring a pooper-scooper because dogs leave large droppings, too.