BOSTON — Goose poop is piling up in parks and playgrounds in Boston and city officials are looking for ways to rein it in.
The City Council held a public hearing Tuesday to discuss ways to mitigate the impact of Canada geese.
People from all over the city attended the meeting, but a large group came from the Fenway area, where the geese seem to be a particularly annoying problem. The people who spoke told the council said the birds have been terrorizing the area for years and have all but taken it over at this point.
At Tuesday's hearing, FOX25 learned that Canada Geese eat about four pounds of grass, on average, and leave around three pounds of droppings behind. Multiply that number by the 8,000 Canada Geese that live within 128 and do not migrate, and you're left with a whole lot of goose poop.
One of the people at the hearing, the athletic director for Emmanuel College, told the council that groundskeepers recently picked up 30 gallons of goose poop from one field in just one day.
Some suggested banishing the geese, and the council did walk away with some feasible ideas.
One idea to come out of the meeting was potentially fining people who feed the geese. Another idea was targeting the eggs and coating them with oil, which would kill the chick inside but fool the mother goose so she doesn't lay any more eggs.
Some suggested trying to scare the geese away with dogs or decoy predators. Volunteer groups have already started trying the tactic at the Esplanade with border collies. So far, the geese keep coming back.
Wildlife experts say the birds are typically migratory but are increasingly staying year-round. Canada geese are federally protected but have no natural predators in the region.
Ithaca, New York; Columbus, Ohio and other communities have also tried controlling the geese in recent years, as have the caretakers of the National Mall in D.C.
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The Associated Press contributed to this report.