Wolves Lurk in Salem

Unusual sights in the capitol city.

Wolf cut-outs at the Oregon State Penitentiary. Photos by Linda Lacy

(SALEM) - There are wolves prowling around the Department of Corrections grounds off Center Street. I timidly slid past one that was crouching near a fir tree.

Another bared his teeth, staring at me menacingly. It made me nervous. There are gray wolves, brown wolves, and painted striped wolves. They’re about a half an inch thick and stiff as, well, a board.

This was my induction into pesky bird removal a la fake wolves with pinwheels on their heads. I asked the receptionist in the Dome Building what was up with the pack of dogs outside, and she informed me that they scare away the Canadian Geese. She told me that not too long ago, the geese population was booming in this part of town, and their slippy, slimy poop was all over the lawns, pavement, and the humans were tracking it into the buildings. Hence, the wolves.

This is the concept: as the geese fly over the landscape, they will abort their landing if they see any predators. So, they fly to someone else’s property instead. Doing a quick Internet search, I found a plethora of geese-scarer-awayers: wolf mannequins, floating alligator heads for ponds, swan decoys, eagles and owls that “fly” from a long pole, LED strobe lights, huge speakers with sounds of dogs and shotgun blasts, “scary eye” balloons, and sadly…dead goose decoys. Several Border Collie owners have even found this goose problem to be a financial boon as they hire themselves out to scare away the geese on a regular schedule.

The problem with these tactics is tri-fold: the geese are simply being shoved around from lawn to lawn, they eventually figure out our little tricks, and some of these decoys are scaring an unintended audience—people! In recent years on the east coast, motion-activated, recorded barking sounds have scared away innocent golfers, and it is not uncommon for folks to get a jolt when they happen upon a life-size 3D coyote in the twilight hours!

So, what really is the big deal over these magnificent birds? For one thing, they’re magnificent poopers…copious poopers. According to U.S. Fish and Wildlife, there are an estimated 3.34 million Canada geese in the United States, and the population is growing by 2 percent each year. Also, each goose dumps 1.5 pounds of feces daily. That means 1.8 billion pounds of white poopage per year, all over our parks, in our water, and on the bottoms of our shoes. And their natural predators—coyotes, wolves, foxes—are in short supply in suburban America.

These 12 to 13 pound birds have also taken to nesting in wide open areas near airports, and a flock of Canadian Geese are our primary suspects for the US Airways jetliner that had to make the 2009 emergency landing in the Hudson River. In April of this year, U.S. senator Kirsten Gillibrand pled with other lawmakers to cull the goose population in her district of New York. There were two close calls in the course of only one week during April, as the poor geese were sucked up into the engines, and the pilots had to return to the airstrip (http://lat.ms/N0XrF3). According to the New York Times in 2010, “there have been 78 Canada goose strikes over 10 years in New York, and those strikes caused more than $2.2 million in aircraft damage.” (http://nyti.ms/O0tqJi)

Closer to home, the Oregon Goose Control Taskforce was born in 2009 to address the agricultural crop losses and aviation problems caused by the overpopulation of geese. Apparently, geese can wreak havoc on the grass seed fields and gobble up the yummy pasture before the livestock have a chance to get to it. Oh, and lucky us, the Willamette Valley has one of the highest concentrations of geese in the state! In season, hunters are allowed to shoot the geese, but only certain varieties, as some breeds are low in numbers. All in all, how to maintain goose-balance is a quandary; but for now, our threatening, stiff wolves are doing their job on the lawn between Center and D Streets.