Photo by andertho

D.C. has always had trouble with Canada geese, but at least we’re not faced with packs of vultures weighing down our trees, killing grass with their poop and otherwise acting like winged annoyances. Leesburg has that problem, reports WTOP, and now the USDA’s Wildlife Services Program is employing some creative methods to get rid of them:

The most noticeable weapons in the program’s arsenal are pyrotechnics.

The cartridges are fired from a launcher that looks like a gun, and their names – “bangers” and “screamers” – describe the sounds they make.

Another way the biologists are harassing the birds is by hanging a dead vulture high in a tree where the birds like to roost.

Supervisory Wildlife Biologist Dage Blixt and two other biologists used a child’s bow and arrow, fishing line, some string and a dead, frozen vulture to set up the display called an effigy.

“The idea is to hang them by the feet upside down, so they’re hanging upside down and when they’re not frozen the wings will come out a little bit, and that seems to be the best pose that the other vultures don’t care for,” says Blixt.

The team may also employ lasers to scare off the birds, which they hope to chase off in at least a week. Vultures have been coming to Leesburg every year for the past 13 years, though experts are hard-pressed to explain why they seem to love the Virginia town so.