CHESHIRE — Four years ago Mixville Pond had what Town Manager Michael Milone called a “major geese problem.”
“The lifeguards had to spend the first half-hour of the day cleaning the beach,” Milone said. “It was every day, and not only unsightly, but unsanitary. It made the place so undesirable and unattractive.”
Milone asked Parks and Recreation Director Bob Ceccolini to find an answer to the problem. Ceccolini initially found temporary solutions, such as noise devices and predator cut-outs, but the park needed a more permanent fix in order to attract residents back to the pond.
“Geese are very bold,” Milone said. “They’re stubborn, and continued to find that spot.”
The town considered obtaining permits for open hunting, or bringing in the federal government to euthanize the geese, but public outcry had Ceccolini researching further for a humane yet permanent solution.
In came Alan Kendrix and his Kerry blue terriers, Kelly and Molly.
Kendrix, a North Haven resident, is former director for the Flexible Manufacturing Networks Center at Central Connecticut State University. He said he was only working about one week a month at the time, and his wife asked him, “Aren’t you getting bored?”
An avid golfer, Kendrix took a walk with his dogs at Traditions Golf Club in Wallingford to collect his thoughts. There were birds on the course, and Kelly took chase. Kendrix knew this wasn’t unusual behavior, but he felt he was on to something. He decided his business would be to keep geese out of areas they’re unwanted, and he named it No Geese Today.
“So I went into it not knowing anything,” Kendrix said, “and I come to find out Kerry blue terriers are one of the only dogs that have herding instincts.”
He had his first audition at the Tunxis Plantation Golf Course in Farmington, but his dogs didn’t react the way he had hoped.
“The dogs just looked up and stood still,” he said.
Kendrix took a new approach at his next tryout, at the Lyman Orchards Golf Club in Middlefield. He told his dogs to stay at the tee as he walked down the fairway, beyond a flock of geese. Using “positive reinforcement” — a treat — he called his dogs to come. They ran straight through the geese, scattering them off the fairway. It was a success, and Kendrix had his first client.
Kendrix is now a licensed nuisance-wildlife operator, and his business is fully insured. Along with Mixville Pond, his clients include Lyman Orchards Golf Club, Lyman Orchards and the Golf Course at Yale.
From knowing nothing about geese, Kendrix said he now probably knows “more about geese than anyone in the state.”
He doesn’t have a written contract with the town of Cheshire, but he has an agreement that calls for 30 days’ notice to end services. Not that the town would ever want to get rid of him.
“He does an excellent job,” Ceccolini said.
By taking the park by land and sea, Kendrix has rid Mixville of geese. He paddles either a kayak or takes a small motorized boat onto the pond to scare geese onto land, where 6-year-old Kelly serves as a predator. Molly has since retired from service. When the geese try to land, Kelly herds them into the air or to less populated parts of the park. From his boat, Kendrix yells “this way,” and Kelly runs furiously around the pond in the direction Kendrix is paddling to herd geese away. Kendrix called Kelly “brave and valiant.”
The method is described as “classical conditioning” by Kendrix.
“When I show up, I want the geese to leave,” he said.
By repetitively scaring geese out of the park, Kendrix has conditioned them to depart as soon as he pulls into the parking lot.
Kendrix, who considers himself a conservationist, said that he now considers the pond to be pretty clean. When he started at the park four years ago, hundreds of geese polluted the pond, a popular swimming spot in Cheshire. Now there are only 20 to 30 geese that do not migrate and stick around, but “they are taught to react to me when I show up,” he said.
There were no geese to be seen on a recent day, but Kendrix is constantly on watch, even when the park seems empty of any fowl whatsoever. At one point, he saw something come out of the bushes at the edge of the beach. He was sitting on a bench about a football field away. He immediately sat up straight and seemed ready to pounce, as if he was about to chase the bird himself. It happened to just be another dog playing in the park with its owner.
His main concern at this time of the year is “pond-hoppers,” geese that wander from other parts of the state to find a safe place to forage. Kendrix can determine which geese are “foreign,” compared to yearly nesters, by approaching the geese and yelling “hut-hut.”
It’s a phrase he yells at the pond’s resident geese, and they know to disperse when they hear him because of conditioning. Geese from elsewhere don’t react.
Kendrix hopes his efforts will attract people back to the park to enjoy a once popular swimming hole now free of the geese.
“It’s a beautiful place,” he said.
aragali@record-journal.com
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