Although music to shop by isn’t going to please everyone, shoppers at one New York mall would rather risk getting hit by bird droppings than listen to the sounds coming out of the complex’s speakers.
Officials at the Rego Center mall in the NYC borough of Queens have installed a system that blasts noisy bird calls every 30 seconds or so, in an effort to deal with a recent infestation of pigeons that have been nesting and pooping in an atrium near one of the mall’s entrances, reports The New York Post.
“That place had a serious bird problem,” one employee told dnainfo, with droppings crusting thickly on planters and benches in the area.
It seems to be working so far, notes ABC-7, noting that only a handful of pigeons landed in the area in a two-hour period.
But the amplified recorded screeching of aggressive birds — macaws, reports CBS New York — is getting on some shoppers’ nerves.
“Many people have been scratching their heads and other are feeling annoyed by the ‘influx of automated birds,’” a local resident and activist told danainfo. “There are better methods of reducing the assembly of pigeons and birds.”
Even one shopper who has been pooped on previously at the mall says he prefers the risk of falling feces to the noise coming out of the mall speakers.
“If you stay here for an hour, it starts to bother you. Of course, it’s going to make you crazy,” he told the Post.
Some say the noise is worth putting up with, however.
“I’d rather hear the bird calls, lesser of two evils,” a Queens resident told ABC-7, though he admitted that he personally didn’t find the noise to be “obtrusive or annoying.”
by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist