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Mayor Rick Kaysen of Cheyenne, Wyoming made the big announcement on Thursday. The city has hired its newest employee. Her name is Flo, she’s only 2 and a half years old and roughly 2 and a half feet tall. And, she’s a dog.
Flo, a Border Collie, has been hired by the city to combat a growing Canadian Geese problem.
“We have tried other types of efforts. We’ve had an egg-addling program; we’ve used decoys; we’ve used general hazing methods,” Kaysen explained in a news conferece. “We’ve respectfully asked the geese to leave the community. (But) we haven’t had a whole lot of cooperative effort.
“So working with Flo, we have a humane way of addressing the overgrowing population of geese in our parks, our cemeteries, our golf courses.”
They city made the decision to hire Flo full time after huge success with ‘Up and Away Goose Control,’ a company that brought in 2 Border Collies to chase away the bothersome geese. The geese, which numbered about 200 when Up and Away came in, quickly dwindled to about a dozen. But, the city needed are longer term solution.
Flo will be able to work every day for about 10 years until she’s too old to continue the job.
Because Border Collies drop their shoulders when stalking, their movement mimics that of the Canadian Goose’s natural predator, the arctic fox. When geese see Flo, they deem the area unsafe move to another area, leaving the city’s parks peaceful again.
Dog hazing, as its termed, has been deemed a reliable, yet humane way to control geese population. Flo will not hurt the geese, she simply frightens them away.
