The trouble with geese

It seems funny, but it’s actually creates a problem with water quality. So much so that the city has been listed on the “Beach Bummer” list by nonprofit Heal the Bay. It’s a notorious achievement, and actually one that city wants to avoid. But doing so is no small task.

Over the years, there have been a number of efforts. They hired a guy with a dog to chase the geese away. They built a fence around some fields. That didn’t work because, well, birds fly.

Most recently, it became less about geese and more about clean water. And there was talk of getting depredation permits to kill the geese, but you know the animal rights people had something to say about that. In fact, there are a lot of people who have a lot to say about the geese. It’s about our most popular topic for readers who call the paper. And it’s even drawn national attention, particularly when the animal rights activists got involved. Most recently, The New York Times had coverage of the controversy, though, it yielded few ideas on what to do.

In lieu of ideas, readers fill in with their own. The most common idea is killing the geese and feeding them to the homeless, or allowing people to hunt them for their own dinners. I mean, maybe if we were in a different century; however, these days, I could see handing a homeless guy a dead goose not going down to well. Another idea is bringing back the dogs. According to the recent callers, the city just didn’t do it right. They needed to have more dogs, all the time. That would drive the hundreds of geese away for good.

Another idea we received was to capture them and fly them on a plane to other cities, with the hope I suppose that they would find the new digs comfy and just stay there.

Another idea is to point lasers at the birds, like they talked about it in Mountain View recently because of the surge of crows.

There are other ideas, but I’d never suggest them, like training the geese and crows to fight each other to having all those kids who ride bikes and light fireworks to do their thing in Foster City. I’d never suggest something like that, like I said. That would be in poor taste.

But loud noises have worked elsewhere, along with balloons, flags, strobe lights, cutouts of dogs and even drones.

Some of the ideas the city has received are remote controlled fake dogs to chase the geese, birth control, creating a sanctuary area, capturing the geese and sterilizing them, introducing predators and even buying machines to pick up the poop.

Foster City Mayor Richa Awasthi said “we are open to all methods, the feasible ones, not the crazy ones.” So it’s a good thing I didn’t suggest my goose-crow fighting idea.

She also said this has been a topic of very high interest as it’s gotten worse in recent years. She mentions school children have difficulty with outside activities, and the water quality is actually quite a serious issue.

Cleaning efforts have been made, but the geese make quick work to see that surfaces don’t remain that way.

“It’s not guaranteed. We can clean and within an hour it’s pooped again,” Awasthi said, adding that power washing is expensive and uses lots of water that is in short supply because of the drought.

No decision has been made, but the City Council is tentatively scheduled to discuss again July 18 what to do.

My serious two cents? Do it in a humane way, but do what needs to be done to mitigate the issue and return the parks and waterways to a condition that is healthy for the community to use. It’s gone on for far too long.

Jon Mays is the editor in chief of the Daily Journal. He can be reached at jon@smdailyjournal.com. Follow Jon on Twitter @jonmays.