Geese are majestic-looking birds, but they come with a lot of problems for homeowners and businesses near the water.
Suzanne Lawler shows you how a few simple actions now can save you from doing a lot of cleaning up this summer.
Susan Tittle with Central Georgia Marina gets a grimace on her face at just the mention of the word "goose."
"Well, the geese are a problem with all of their feces everywhere -- it's very much an annoyance for our customers and ourselves that we're constantly having to clean our docks because it's everywhere," she explained.
Goose poop is pretty frustrating, but it's only one reason that this business and countless other Georgians find geese foul.
"No, they are not friendly creatures -- they will try to attack you, they don't like our customers, they don't like our boats, but they want to have their nests in them," Susan said.
Department of Natural Resources biologist Greg Balkcom fields a lot of calls from folks frustrated over the birds.
"Statewide, we estimate we have in the neighborhood of 300,000 geese," Greg calculated.
He says there are some things you can do to prevent a goose from falling in love with your land.
"When we get calls from landowners, the number one thing we tell them is, 'Don't feed the geese,'" Greg exclaimed.
DNR says it's completely legal to harass geese to get them off your property -- just go and scare them, as long as you don't touch them -- and there are a couple of other easy things like Mylar balloons and fishing line you can use to chase them up the road.
"Just two strands of fishing line -- they could fly over it, but they generally don't," Greg said.
Remember, you can't kill a goose on your property -- they're a protected species -- but if the simple tricks don't work, DNR does issue permits in certain circumstances so you get a little relief.
"But if you're in a situation where it causes health problems, contamination of water supply, or you have economic damage to your property, those are the types of situations where we can issue permits, and you can hire a nuisance trapper to come and have those birds removed," Greg said.
Springtime is also the time to get ahead of this problem because geese go through a molting season in late spring. Scaring them then won't do much good because they lose their feathers and they can't fly away, so you're pretty much stuck with them.