Geese Get Last Laugh As Decoy Vanishes
37 minutes ago
FAIR LAWN, N.J. - Beep! Beep! It vanished in the dead of night. In the morning, not even the boogie board on which the coyote stood was bobbing in the municipal pool.
The animal, dubbed Wiley after the inept Wile E. Coyote in the Warner Bros. "Road Runner" cartoons, was Fair Lawn's answer to an overabundance of geese, which had plagued the town's parks and pools for years.
Now he's missing in action, and the geese aren't talking.
The Bergen County town this year hired National Goose Management of East Rutherford to help rid it of gaggles of unwanted visitors. The company employs a variety of techniques to harass the geese, using everything from noisemakers to lasers to create an unfriendly environment.
One of the most menacing tactics was employing a stuffed coyote — Wiley — to stand guard over the municipal pool during off hours.
Wiley is made from a real coyote pelt and "smells like a wet dog now," according to parks Superintendent George Frey, who said the animal was on patrol every night this summer until being snatched last week.
Every night at closing time, the coyote was placed on a float at Memorial Pool that was anchored in place with a weighted bottle on a rope.
"It worked great," says Frey, until "somebody swam into the pool, cut the rope and grabbed him." Frey suspects the theft was a prank, involving two or more people, who knew when the pool's overnight geese guards took their breaks and ate their lunch.
"We're hoping he materializes," said Frey.
The stuffed coyote was supplied by the goose management company and cost about $700.
There's no time to get a replacement, Frey said, since a new coyote would be on order for weeks, and Fair Lawn closes its pools around Labor Day.
Municipal employees scanned the shores of the nearby Passaic River looking for Wiley and have searched local parks and municipal property.
However, in a town the size of Fair Lawn, which covers about 90 square miles, finding Wiley could prove as exasperating for parks employees as trying to catch the Road Runner was for Wile E.
37 minutes ago
FAIR LAWN, N.J. - Beep! Beep! It vanished in the dead of night. In the morning, not even the boogie board on which the coyote stood was bobbing in the municipal pool.
The animal, dubbed Wiley after the inept Wile E. Coyote in the Warner Bros. "Road Runner" cartoons, was Fair Lawn's answer to an overabundance of geese, which had plagued the town's parks and pools for years.
Now he's missing in action, and the geese aren't talking.
The Bergen County town this year hired National Goose Management of East Rutherford to help rid it of gaggles of unwanted visitors. The company employs a variety of techniques to harass the geese, using everything from noisemakers to lasers to create an unfriendly environment.
One of the most menacing tactics was employing a stuffed coyote — Wiley — to stand guard over the municipal pool during off hours.
Wiley is made from a real coyote pelt and "smells like a wet dog now," according to parks Superintendent George Frey, who said the animal was on patrol every night this summer until being snatched last week.
Every night at closing time, the coyote was placed on a float at Memorial Pool that was anchored in place with a weighted bottle on a rope.
"It worked great," says Frey, until "somebody swam into the pool, cut the rope and grabbed him." Frey suspects the theft was a prank, involving two or more people, who knew when the pool's overnight geese guards took their breaks and ate their lunch.
"We're hoping he materializes," said Frey.
The stuffed coyote was supplied by the goose management company and cost about $700.
There's no time to get a replacement, Frey said, since a new coyote would be on order for weeks, and Fair Lawn closes its pools around Labor Day.
Municipal employees scanned the shores of the nearby Passaic River looking for Wiley and have searched local parks and municipal property.
However, in a town the size of Fair Lawn, which covers about 90 square miles, finding Wiley could prove as exasperating for parks employees as trying to catch the Road Runner was for Wile E.
