It’s bright orange with menacingly sharp teeth. As it floats around on the water, its piercing yellow eyes appear to follow its target no matter where it moves. It also has a propeller for a nose.
It’s the Goosinator.
One of the Goosinators — which are remote-controlled devices used to haze geese — can be found hanging out at Henderson Lake Park in Lethbridge, Alta., where the city has taken a creative approach to goose management.
“We have a goose-management plan to try to reduce the number of resident geese that hang out in Lethbridge over the winter,” said Erin McIlwraith, parks operations coordinator with the City of Lethbridge.
“We want to keep these geese healthy and our water quality up, so we try many different techniques to keep them migrating the way that they should.”
Invented by a man named Randy Claussen in the state of Colorado, the Goosinator unit is a two foot-long styrofoam-based device with the goal of mimicking a predator.
When floating around a body of water, it embodies various qualities geese don’t like — its large painted-on teeth, the noise of the propeller and its fluorescent, visually offensive signature orange hue all work together to intimidate the animals.
Nelson Houle is operating Henderson Lake’s Goosinator, and he explained the device is being used to address the growing number of waterfowl — like geese and ducks — causing issues in the area.
“The more you use it, the sooner they recognize it. So repetitive use is key,” Houle told CBC Radio’s The Homestretch.
“As soon as I show up … and as soon as I pull it out of the truck, you can hear them getting nervous. So they’re quick learners, and the colours are very disturbing to them as well.”
The Homestretch9:56The Goosinator
GOOSE BE GONE! We tell you about a new contraption that Lethbridge is using to manage a glut of Canada geese at Henderson Lake.
Lethbridge’s waterfowl populations have grown significantly over the past few years, according to the city, as many of these birds are choosing to stay in town as opposed to migrating south throughout the wintertime.
“This deviation from their migratory patterns is attributed to unseasonably warm weather as well as human interference,” reads the city’s website.
Some of the issues as a result of the birds staying in the city include more human-goose conflict, feces accumulation and water quality degradation, among other things.
McIlwraith said the idea behind implementing the Goosinator is to have the geese that are crowding one area fly to another place. She said that, because Lethbridge has recently had some warmer winters, resident geese have decided to hang back instead of migrating.
As the lake water slowly freezes and turns to ice, the spots for waterfowl to swim shrink, which McIlwraith said puts the birds at a higher risk of contracting illnesses.
“So the closer proximity that they live, as the ice kind of covers the lake, but little areas stay open, [the birds] get closer and closer. And that can introduce more risk for disease and fungal infections,” she said.
“We want to use the Goosinator to close that water. So if we can get them off those little patches of open water long enough for it to freeze over, then they’ll keep moving on.”
For right now, Henderson Lake is the only Lethbridge area using the Goosinator, as all the city’s other ponds have completely frozen over.
What’s more, animal-lovers need not fear the Goosinator, as it doesn’t physically harm the birds, according to McIlwraith.
“We don’t want to injure or hurt them in any way. We just want to make sure that we’re protecting the people that use the parks, as well as the geese,” said McIlwraith.
As for Houle, he said that controlling the Goosinator is easy to do on water or ice, describing its movement as “gentle.”
“When we talk about hazing the geese, that’s the first thing people think is [that] we’re just racing into them,” Houle said.
“But the movements of the natural predator are more of a slow motion. Trying to let the colours of it and the sound of it chase them away, or deter them from staying.”
Overall, the city says it’s using the Goosinator in a strategic way, making sure it’s only deployed when appropriate, as well as monitoring how the tool impacts the waterfowl population.
