Shoo!

Elaine tells me that she read where city fathers in a beach community in California are concerned about hundreds of seals who have taken over one of the beach areas. They are going to install recorders and a series of loud speakers and broadcast the sounds of barking dogs in an attempt to scare away the seals. The cost will be $700,000.

By my calculations, with that amount of money they could buy 1,000 large naturally barking dogs, lots of leashes and restraints, and dog houses, and ex-CEO's to manage the dogs. Wouldn't this be a better solution. They must realize that after a while, listening to barking recordings, the seals would just tune them off, or use white-noise headphones.

But with actual dogs, that lunge and jump and chase while barking, the seals would soon get the idea and disappear.

What about those poor home-owners who paid extravagent prices to own beach-front property? What do they think of the sound of barking dogs all day long and probably at night?

Don't these Californians know that after being scared away for a little while, the seals will come back to this place that they have bonded to?

A little while ago, our city of Westminster, Maryland, decided that wild geese and ducks were making too much of a mess at a popular pond where children play and people go to have picnic lunches. They made a concerted effort to scare the birds away, and I think that they even transported a lot of them to other ponds.

Guess what? In a little while, they all came back, and are now once more happily honking and pooping all over the place. The kids and their parents don't seem to mind.

The Social Security Administration headquarters at Woodlawn, Maryland, is the home of hundreds of geese. They come there to enjoy Svahn Lake (a large pool authorized by a Commissioner named Svahn), get fed by some employees and raise their families. Every morning a crew goes around cleaning up all the poop. Nobody even tries to get rid of these birds, because it doesn't work.

So.. the California city managers will learn that you can't fight Mother Nature.

PS There is one similar case that did work but with humans, not animals or birds.. I think it was in London where teenagers were hanging around a mall area and making a mess of it. The merchants bought a big sound system and started playing loud classical music near the congregating area. The teenagers immediately left the area, never to return.