Thousands of crows make Rochester, New York their home every holiday season. It is estimated that around 20,000 of them gather nightly in downtown Rochester. It’s a hell of a sight, but as you can imagine, 20,000 crows make a gigantic mess that maybe isn’t worth the awesome visual. So, residents and city officials have devised various “hazing” methods, as they call them, to get rid of the birds, some of which include fireworks and lasers.
Officials spend around $9,000 annually on dispersing large gatherings of the birds to keep benches and sidewalks clean so the city doesn’t have to fork over money to power wash half of the damn city. In 2012, city officials, led by wildlife specialists Rachel Kudiba and Daniel Hojnacki, devised various hazing techniques that don’t harm the crows but annoy them just enough to disrupt their roosting patterns, rudely but nonviolently suggesting that they should move to less congested areas.
How the City of Rochester, New York Battles Crows Every Year
The annual hazing regimen has turned into a kind of unofficial holiday ritual, with locals and officials like Rachel taking it upon themselves to act as anti-crow vigilantes. They’ll track crow clusters by sight or sound, and then employ their favorite techniques to disperse them. The tools of disbursement include loud fireworks, spotlights, blasting sound recordings of crows in distress, and projecting laser beams onto nearby buildings to disorient and frighten. Crows may be assholes but there’s no reason to hurt them.
Ornithologists say the crows are perfectly fine, but that hasn’t stopped some locals from feeling at least a little bit of sympathy for the crows, like the folks in the Rochesterians for Crows Facebook group. There is no way to stop the crows from showing up every year since Rochester is a part of their natural ongoing migration cycle. So until someone comes up with a better tactic, the citizens of Rochester must arm themselves with fireworks and laser projectors to disband the flying defecating menace.
The post New York Is Fighting Its Annual Christmas Battle Against 20,000 Crows appeared first on VICE.
The post New York Is Fighting Its Annual Christmas Battle Against 20,000 Crows appeared first on VICE.
