LITTLE ROCK — Border collies Bud and Heck sprinted after gaggles of geese in North Little Rock’s Burns Park for the first time Thursday morning, sending the honkers across the Arkansas River.
Within a short time, no geese could be found in the nearly 1,700-acre park, although about three dozen had returned by afternoon.
The dogs will keep returning for the goose chase until the geese are no longer a park nuisance.
“They’ve already sent them over to Little Rock,” a grinning city Parks Director Bob Rhoads said after the dogs’ morning run.
But where the geese landed after crossing the river Thursday morning is a mystery. They didn’t land across the river at Rebsamen Park, golf shop employee John Cherepski said.
“The geese, I think, know not to come around here,” he said. “We’ve not had geese for a couple of years. No new geese. If there were, Fern would have taken care of them at that moment,” he said referring to the golf course’s own border collie.
For now, North Little Rock has hired Lose-A-Goose, a Benton company owned and managed by Gary Westbrook, to help rid the park of about 200 troublesome geese that can each defecate up to 92 times a day and otherwise hinder park use.
The hired dogs are the first part of the city’s agreement to try nonlethal methods to reduce the geese population. The city also plans to buy a trained dog to shoo away geese full time.
Late last year, the North Little Rock City Council approved a controlled hunt set for Dec. 20-22 at Burns Park to thin out the gaggle. More than 100 hunters were selected to kill 130-135 of the geese.
But, on Dec. 12, Mayor Patrick Hays postponed the hunt to consider alternatives after social-networking websites rallied vehement opposition to the hunt.
Hays then announced on Dec. 27 that a variety of nonlethal alternatives had been agreed upon, putting off the hunt indefinitely, though a controlled kill remains possible, Hays has said. The Coalition to Save the Geese of Burns Park, which led the opposition, is partnering with the city to help in the nonlethal efforts.
Besides dogs, the city is to use lights at night to disturb nesting, and egg addling where the eggs are coated in cooking oil to prevent hatching.
The estimated cost of the alternatives is $24,000, Hays has said, with the coalition agreeing to raise half of that amount. By Thursday, the group had collected about $3,200 in donations, coalition representative Scott White said.
Paying a trainer to have dogs chase geese away for the next few months is the first step.
North Little Rock will pay Westbrook $250 per day instead of a monthly fee, Rhoads said, for an undetermined number of days.
On Thursday, Westbrook led out two male border collies for the initial chase. He also used an 18-inch-long, remote-controlled boat with a siren and flashing light when the geese tried to swim away from the dogs.
The dogs — Heck, nearly
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3 and Bud, 2 /2 — were alert and hyper around reporters and photographers who had flocked to the Burns Park golf course at midmorning to see them in action, although no geese were around then.
“That’s why I brought them to start with,” Westbrook said of Bud and Heck. “They know what’s going on.”
Bud seemed the more energetic and social of the pair, taking off at a dead run across the golf course and jerking his head to each side when Westbrook commanded “Look!” The city may buy Bud outright, Rhoads said.
Westbrook will rotate four dogs during the work at Burns Park, he said. A female, Pud, and a male, Link, are the other border collies. Border collies have been bred for centuries to manage livestock, Westbrook said.
“They don’t bite, they apply pressure,” he explained.
White, representing the coalition, went to the park early enough to see the dogs chase some geese.
“They made short work of them this morning,” White said.
“It’ll be a process, it’s not a one-time inconvenience,” he added. “The geese will have to learn that this park isn’t the friendly place for them that it used to be.”
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 01/06/2012