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Too Many Geese Leaving North Shore With A Fowl Problem

NORTH SHORE (KDKA) – If you've spent any time on the North Shore, you know the geese are a problem.

More specifically, it's the mess the leave behind. It's a real mess.

And the search for a solution has led to the "Geese Police."

Take a stroll through the North Shore Riverfront Park, but step gingerly. On any given day you'll find it to be a minefield of goose feces, left daily by a flock of Canada geese who call the grassy knoll home.

The geese settled in shortly after the park opened in 2001. The Sports and Exhibition Authority built and operates the park and the geese have resister everything the authority has tried to shoo them away.

"We've tried fake owls," said Taylor Blice with the Sports and Exhibition Authority. "We've tried trip lines, spraying with geese repellant. None of those have been effective."

And now, they face Peg, an 8-year-old border collie, with the organization "Geese Police." For the next 16 weeks, three or four times a day, Peg and owner Brandan Bowen will be moving the geese out onto the Allegheny.

Then Brandon and Peg will take to the water in a kayak to move them downstream, as far away from the Riverfront Park as possible. But will this full-court press succeed where other methods have failed? They could just be moving the geese and making them someone else's problem.

"They could, but hopefully they go where they're not bothering anyone," said Bowen.

But every day the geese do come back and it's likely that a good number of them will stay for the long term, despite the efforts to relocate them.

Their numbers, however, should diminish over time and for most of the day the grass and the pathways will be clean.

And so it appears that even with the new offensive, the geese will come back and are at the park to stay. All we can hope for is some peaceful and sanitary co-existence.

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