They never wear buttons but they got cool hats.

Shoulda just threw a few packets of alkaselzter up there.

Mall officials say they will comply with the order to only fire the cannons between 3 p.m. and 7 p.m.


Four hours per day will surely be sufficient to redirect the natural tendencies of wild avian visitors.

Just get a few kids with pellet guns. Problem solved

Wonder how far they can shoot'em

Tell meth heads there is a chemical in the crows that can be made into super meth.

/Solved

groppet: Just get a few kids with pellet guns. Problem solved

Well, arguably that would result in a second, more dangerous problem.

Dang interwebs..

Teen Wolf Blitzer: groppet: Just get a few kids with pellet guns. Problem solved

Well, arguably that would result in a second, more dangerous problem.

Ah, that's the beauty of the thing, come winter the gorillas will simply freeze to death!

/at least that's where i see this line of solutions going

Cannons? What a ridiculous "solution". The should just have a program where they exchange mall gift certificates for every crow killed on the property. They get rid of the crows while bringing additional foot traffic into the mall. They could also sell the dead crows to the Vietnamese restaurant in the food court. I swear, those people eat anything.

Had to do sumthin'. D'eys was jackin' cars and sellin' smack.

An explanation of this system would be helpful to the article.

FOR THOSE ABOUT TO ROCK...

Bird of prey?

...Cannons? That's both awesome and totally stupid.

Owl replicas, posted conspicuously around the roof, will take care of this problem. There's a few spots in my town where smart people have done this, so of course when the crows/pigeons congregate elsewhere someone gets all pissy about it and starts poisoning them. Wish I was kidding about that.

Lancaster, PA continues its tradition of complicated awesome answers to simple problems

ladyfortuna: ...Cannons? That's both awesome and totally stupid.

Owl replicas, posted conspicuously around the roof, will take care of this problem. There's a few spots in my town where smart people have done this, so of course when the crows/pigeons congregate elsewhere someone gets all pissy about it and starts poisoning them. Wish I was kidding about that.

My parents ended up doing that my dad calls it his ODS (Owl Defense System) works pretty well. The birds pretty much stay away from the house

these things are pretty farking loud, believe me. The ones I've seen used near cornfields, rural airports and such are propane powered - they make a pretty mighty boom.

Here's some of the portable ones used in a lot of orchards and ag situations... Bird Bombs and Other Pyro (pops)

some great videos on teh tubes of fun with some.

I can see where if you lived close, you'd want some other solution than bird artillery

dcigary: Around here we call them "Grackles". They have a hanging out place at one shopping center parking lot, and it sounds like a jungle when you get out of your car and (literally) run into the store. I can't visit a fast-food drive-thru there because my car WILL be targeted. They've tried everything - speakers that blare out bird of prey squaks, .22 blank cartridges (like a starter pistol), fireworks, and one day I saw two clerks from the grocery store out in the parking lot with those hand-held remote laser scanners shining the lasers up into the trees. The only good thing is that there isn't a insect within 2 miles of that area....

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$2.95/gallon for regular? wow!

dcigary: Around here we call them "Grackles". They have a hanging out place at one shopping center parking lot, and it sounds like a jungle when you get out of your car and (literally) run into the store. I can't visit a fast-food drive-thru there because my car WILL be targeted. They've tried everything - speakers that blare out bird of prey squaks, .22 blank cartridges (like a starter pistol), fireworks, and one day I saw two clerks from the grocery store out in the parking lot with those hand-held remote laser scanners shining the lasers up into the trees. The only good thing is that there isn't a insect within 2 miles of that area....

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A grackle isn't the same as a crow. It's a different kind of bird altogether.

Tillmaster

It's a different kind of bird altogether.


"It's a different kind of bird."

I believe all it would take to solve the problem is for one crow to be shot and killed at the problem area. The rest would scatter, and they'd remember what happened and tell their friends what happened and pass the tale on to their offspring. I'm not kidding!

Englebert Slaptyback: Mall officials say they will comply with the order to only fire the cannons between 3 p.m. and 7 p.m.


Four hours per day will surely be sufficient to redirect the natural tendencies of wild avian visitors.

Thank god they're no longer bothering those housewives who sleep in until 3pm every day.

dcigary, grackles aren't even corvids. But I have seen huge flocks of them congregating before, when I lived back east. Here in Sacramento we have massive crow influx around this time of year. Scary huge flocks. But I like them.

groppet: Just get a few kids with pellet guns. Problem solved

Yeah this is pretty much all you need. If you want to get real edgy, maybe give them some .22s with some rat shot.

So how do they get the crows into the cannon?

groppet: Just get a few kids with pellet guns. Problem solved

Are you talking about a murder of crows?

Oh, anti-crow cannons... Read that wrong... I was thinking "Why don't they just put up a fence..."

Englebert Slaptyback: Tillmaster

It's a different kind of bird altogether.


"It's a different kind of bird."

Its a different kind of bird.

Englebert Slaptyback: "It's a different kind of bird."

"It's an entirely different kind of flying, altogether!"
""It's an entirely different kind of flying."

Actually subby, us here in Lancaster are well renown for simple answers to ALL problems.

As a resident of Lancaster, and someone who is annoyed by the cannons, I'm OK with this.

Englebert Slaptyback: Mall officials say they will comply with the order to only fire the cannons between 3 p.m. and 7 p.m.


Four hours per day will surely be sufficient to redirect the natural tendencies of wild avian visitors.

Crows settle down around sundown and stay put for the night. The intent is to keep them off the mall roof when they're looking for a place to roost for the night. They've apparently been pecking the roof apart.

I was near the mall the other day and kept hearing the cannons going off, without knowing what they were. They sound very much like a shotgun firing across the parking lot.

I do use the Beeman Crow Magnum pellets in .177 and .22 - in two of my air rifles, they are the most accurate pellets in the field class.



3 from 20 yards with the Gamo .177cal springer and a 4X scope using Crow Magnums

Lancaster resident here. This gave me an idea....next Halloween, I'm installing a trick-or-treater cannon to keep the damn things off my porch.

Put a tv up there with rush and glenn beck, that'll put them to sleep and then they can club them with baby seals.

My monitor is dirty and I read it as anti-cow cannons.

/couldn't understand what somebody would have against cows

SoundOfOneHandWanking: My monitor is dirty and I read it as anti-cow cannons.

/couldn't understand what somebody would have against cows

Hahaha... But just imagine, if cows were actually evil creatures in need of extermination, how much fun it would be to take them out with a Bofors 40mm pom pom gun....

Any excuse to fire a cannon is a good one as far as Ikm concerned.

Heavy traffic
Bear attacks
Curing AIDS
Flat tires
Mother's day

As a former Lancaster Co resident... kick....etc..

A while back the yuppies living in the 'burbs near that mall were up in arms about the crows roosting in their neighborhoods after being scared away from the mall by the cannons.

The Township had a plan to feed the crows Cheetos laced with poison. Plan was to spread out the Cheetos every evening and then gather up the ones that the crows didn't eat before morning. Residents were shocked at the thought of dead crows raining down from the skies. PETA was none too pleased either.The local newspaper forum was barraged with comments and a couple of Township meetings almost came to blows over it.

Now that's a complicated solution to a simple problem.

So glad I don't live there any more. Here when we have a bird problem, we just break out the shotguns and the problem's solved

dcigary: Around here we call them "Grackles".

Let me guess... San Antonio? Yes, the grackles are freaking insane here, always have been. The noise is almost deafening in some places (like the HEB at Pleasanton and Military).