Give a Hoot, Stop Defecating on Cars

In the trees that line the Malkin Athletic Center (MAC) parking lot, there once lived a lot of little starlings who just loved to eat the berries in the trees. But all was not well at this collision of concrete and Mother Nature. “They eat the berries and decide to poop on the cars!” laughs April Tavares, a Harvard Parking Office employee. But for the car owners whose paint jobs were bearing the brunt of these aerial bombardments, this was no laughing matter. At $450 for a spot for one year, car owners paid for convenience, not corrosion from the surprisingly acidic starling droppings. The parking lot’s users decided to take action and filed a complaint with the Parking Office this past winter. Enough of that shit.

The solution?

Two big, brown, faux owls with rotating heads, courtesy of the Harvard Parking Department and modeled after common starling predators.

Perched on top of the light poles, powered by the electricity running into the lights, the fake owls have been frightening away the starlings—and the mess that comes with them—since this past February, .

“We were all surprised that it worked so well because it was a real trip for us,” says Ken Casey, crew chief of Facilities Maintenance Operations at the MAC. “If you watch them for a bit, every couple seconds the owls’ heads turn. Oh, see! There it goes!,” he points. Casey, who is very knowledgeable about the acidity of starling poop, is ever-eager to show off the owl technology to an interested onlooker.

Thanks to the phony owls, parking lot patrons are happy, and Eliot and Kirkland House residents now have something exciting to watch every day.

And the starlings? They have fled the terror of these buggy-eyed robots—and taken their poop elsewhere.