What are these things doing in Waterloo Park?

Don’t be alarmed if you see some strange new creatures in Waterloo Park.

Don’t be alarmed if you see some strange new creatures in Waterloo Park. They’re plastic, totally harmless and the wild-eyed beasts are there to scare geese, not you.

The City of Waterloo stationed around eight decoy coyotes around the park earlier this month to test if they’ll keep geese – and the mess they create – away from popular spots.

Tom Margetts, manager of park operations for the City of Waterloo, said the city received a number of complaints about the birds last season.

“We have a plan to put a broader goose management program together, but in the meantime we wanted to think of a way to help deter geese,” he explained. “So as an experiment, we purchased some coyote decoys in a few different stances, a few different models, and we’ve placed them around the lake.”

Coyotes are natural predators of Canada geese, Margetts said. The decoys’ tails also move in the wind, which could act as an additional deterrent.

City staff plan to periodically rotate them around the park over the course of the spring.

“We’ll try them in the next few months, we’ll probably move them away in the summer and maybe look at bringing them back in the fall,” he said.