Cedar Rapids Unveils Remote Controlled Goose-Chasing Machines Because Geese Have Been Shitting Too Much In Public Areas

CEDAR RAPIDS — Who needs border collies when you have FIDO? Flummoxed city parks officials a year ago toyed with the idea of recruiting border collies to take a turn at chasing and terrorizing the packs of Canada geese that comfortably mass in city parks and golf courses and leave loads of droppings behind. Instead of putting border collies through the paces, the city called on members of the Quiet Flyers, a local remote-control airplane club, to help come up with a remote-control menace to scatter unwanted geese. And on Tuesday, City Manager Jeff Pomeranz unveiled FIDO — Fowl Intercept & Dispersal Officer — at the city’s new McGrath Amphitheatre, now a favorite riverfront hangout for scores of geese and where on Tuesday it was hard to see the still-brown grass for the geese feces. FIDO is a bright fluorescent orange, dog-looking “craft” made of high-density Styrofoam that comes with wheels, the ability to move on ground and water and a mouthful of giant bared teeth.  “We don’t want to terrify the geese, we just want to chase them and let them know this isn’t a good place for them,” Gibbins said.

I thought for sure this was a fake story when somebody sent it to me.  I thought The Onion or some other satirical website just randomly chose the city of Cedar Rapids to write a geese shitting story.  Nope.  This story is 100% true and it’s happening almost literally in my back yard.  Goose shitting has apparently become an epidemic in my hometown. And these devil looking FIDO things are actually going to be zipping around parks and other public places to scare off geese so they don’t shit all over the place and ruin humans shoes.  They’ve got a whole fleet of those fucking things.  I didn’t even know this was/could be a real problem that forced committees to be formed, funding to be collected and action to be taken.  They even kicked around the idea of bringing in border collies to scare the geese before ultimately deciding they needed to bring in the big guns.  I guess I just go to geese-free zones in Cedar Rapids because I can’t recall ever being somewhere and saying “I wish this place was covered in less goose shit.”  Never once has that happened.  I just have one question: Why couldn’t we use humans to scare away the geese?  The article says something about that not working but if you can’t scare away a bird then you’re simply not trying hard enough.  All you do is run at them screaming like a mad man and they fly away.  Problem solved.

PS- I kind of want one of those things.  They’re bad ass looking.