It’s a well-documented fact that geese are surprisingly unstable jerks who will not hesitate to hurt you physically, possibly with the help of their monstrous serrated tongues. A goose is the kind of animal you’d want to avoid in a dark alley, at a house party, or say, on a college campus. An easy way to do this: don’t go where the geese go. Canada’s University of Waterloo, which is home to a fairly large goose population, uses a digital tracker called Goose Watch to help students avoid their aggressive waddling neighbors.
Launched in the spring of 2013, Goose Watch lets students submit the locations of various nests around campus and find travel routes least likely to result in an altercation with a ruffled waterfowl. Users can select their comfort level with geese — from “comfortable” to “I want to keep my distance” — and the app will find directions based on that comfort (or lack thereof).
The interactive map is only active during nesting season, roughly a few months out of the year. The previous year’s Goose Watch remains online as an artifact until it refreshes for the next season.
I spoke over email with James McCarthy, the main developer of Goose Watch, to find out if mapping is the answer to angry geese.