Pingree hopes to annoy pesky geese

The biggest subdivision in Pingree Grove is working on plans for a wild-goose chase.

With the help of floating strobe lights.

Three members of the village board this week heard a presentation from Away With Geese.com, a Cincinnati-based company that makes the blinking lights geared to shoo away Canada geese.

Here’s how they work: a single, solar-powered amber light is mounted on a platform that’s placed in the pond and activated at night when the geese are in the water. The pulsating light, which has the same brightness as a lit cigarette, disrupts the birds’ sleeping patterns and forces them to relocate within days or weeks.

“They’re very lazy birds — they like to eat, sleep and poop in the same area,” said Thomas Wells, president of Away With Geese.com. “The light to you and I doesn’t look like very much, but for them, they can’t sleep with it.”

The Cambridge Lakes Homeowners Association is considering buying the $329 lights to keep the geese out of its ponds and wanted to run the idea by the village board.

Away With Geese presented the lights to the board Monday but the board did not discuss them because wasn’t a quorum.

“I’m feeling people out individually,” Interim Village Administrator Bill Barlow said, adding that Trustee Greg Marston is the only one to raise concerns about the lights. Marston could not be reached for comment Friday.

For Pingree Grove, the problem is more than just annoyance. The federally protected birds’ droppings carry seeds from invasive plants that kill off desirable natural plants surrounding the ponds, Public Works Director Pat Doherty said.

As well, the birds eat grass and track algae on their webbed feet from other ponds to Pingree Grove’s, forcing the village to pay an outside company to clean them up. Last year, the cash-strapped village budgeted $10,000 toward the cleanup, Doherty said.

There are eight man-made ponds in the subdivision and half have been treated for algae issues. Officials from Cambridge and the management company that runs the homeowners association declined to comment for this article.

Meanwhile, the pulsating light is one of the more interesting ways communities in the Northwest and West suburbs have considered for geese abatement.

Earlier this month, the DuPage County Forest District ordered about a dozen rubber coyote decoys to keep the geese from congregating in several forest preserves.

In 2004, the Gail Borden Library hired a firm that used border collies to chase the geese away that were lounging near the Fox River in Elgin. Authorities complained library patrons were tracking the droppings into the facility.