By Kaitlin Durbin
k-durbin@onu.edu
 
 
Walkways and grasslands are now healthier for students with the help of Goose Buster, a system designed to prompt geese to leave campus through a series of projected distressed geese calls.
With the campus Canada Geese population reaching a high of 150, the amount of feces covering the grass and sidewalk surrounding the pond posed a concern to student health.
Additionally, reports of attacks and vehicular accidents caused by the geese led administration to seek out a solution to the problem.
To minimize the issue, chairman of the Department of Biological and Allied Health Sciences, Terry Keiser elected to bring in the Goose Buster system to rid the campus of the excessive amount of geese.
ONU did in fact witness a significant decrease in the geese population over the course of Goose Buster's use, specifically during winter break.
"The Goose Buster seems to be working well from my observations," Keiser said. "Over break I did not see any Canadian Geese on the Freed Center pond."
Goose Buster was initially installed only around the Freed Center pond (effective for up to 7 acres) to test the quality of the system. Now that it has withheld its initial promise, though, it is expected to be installed around all the ponds to ensure that the geese leave campus entirely.
"The problem with having the geese on campus is they are staying year-round and making ONU their permanent home," Mark Staley, Director of Facilities at the Physical Plant, said. "There are too many of them and they are creating a mess that we don't want the students to have to deal with."
Before the success of Goose Buster, ONU had exhausted all other options available to rid the university of the newly named pests-swans, brought in to drive the geese off, merely befriended the geese, the use of chemicals became unethical, and the hunting and shooting of the animals too inhumane.
"The key to Goose Buster is creating an environment that the geese don't like so they want to leave," Keiser said. "And it seems to be working well."
Due to the success of the Goose Buster system, the campus is becoming a cleaner and healthier environment for students to live in.
"We just hope students outdoor lives here at ONU become easier, more enjoyable, and healthier now that they have less ‘stuff' to worry about," Staley said.