Even hardened convicts are no match for these guard geese

livemint.com:

SÃO PEDRO DE ALCÂNTARA, Brazil—A prison in southern Brazil has come up with a novel way to bolster security: replacing guard dogs with geese. A squadron of nine silky-feathered birds—the “geese agents," as guards call them—now patrol the grassy strip of land between the inner fence and the outer wall at the high-security prison here in São Pedro de Alcântara, a small town some 400 miles north of the border with Uruguay. Fiercely territorial, the fiendish nine-pounders can be surprisingly intimidating, charging at anyone who dares enter their enclosure and unleashing a deafening cacophony of honks and shrieks that serves to alert guards if one of the prison’s 1,300 inmates tries to escape.

Their canine predecessors napped all the time and proved too expensive, says the prison’s director, Marcos Souza. The Belgian Malinois that used to roam the prison’s 3,000-foot-long perimeter wall cost $7,000 each, ate fancy dog food and racked up a small fortune in vet bills, he said. “The geese are happy with rice and they never get sick," Souza explained.

Prison officers first got the idea a few years ago when they were cornered by a gaggle of angry geese during a barbecue. Like in many of Brazil’s underfunded jails, the prison’s then-director was struggling to make ends meet and agreed to give them a shot at patrolling the grounds. “The geese are like colleagues for me," says Marcos Coronetti, a prison officer, recoiling at the question of whether he likes the taste.