I tend to cringe when posters ask for highly personal medical advice in this thread. Just seems wrong, and something that should be kept in family. However, there always seems to be at least one person who has an idea about the problem. Maybe this can work for other problems that seem unique and others share.
Here’s mine: Birds keep defecating on my car. I’ve tried parking on the other side of the street, and they keep finding their way to the car and making a mess of it. I can obviously clean it anytime I want, but it seems kind of pointless because they keep coming back and crapping all over it.
So, any ideas of how to keep them away? Know that a garage is out of the question. I’m thinking maybe some rubber snakes left on the roof. Or perhaps mothballs? Those are suppose to keep away pests, right? Worse comes to worse, I might start putting a tarp over the car, but that seems like a lot of work.
So anyone else experience this problem and have any ideas/advice other than upping my car washing budget and feeling embarrassed when people see it?
I tried your first suggestion, it didn’t seem to work. The second… I’m not sure I’m comfortable firing a gun at my car. I kind of like the glass in the windows.
Don’t some species of butterfly avoid becoming bird-dinner better than others when they have patterns on their wings that resemble eyes? You could try that approach:
I managed to convince some crows who were congregating on my roof every freaking morning to peck at my skylights to leave by throwing gravel at them every time they did it until they stopped and never came back. The bad thing is that I had to get up at dawn and wait for them for a few days, and my neighbors probably think I’m crazy now. Goddamn birds, get off my roof.
You probably don’t want to throw gravel at your car either, though.
I worked at an outdoor restaurant once that had some kind of ultrasonic bird repeller that worked pretty well, except that occasionally one of the birds would get confused or something and fly into and through the restaurant and smash headfirst into a window at one end. Usually they got up after a few minutes and flew away, although there were a few casualities.
Hook a recording of a red tailed hawk scream to your car alarm. Let it run constantly. No more bird poop. Of course the neighbors might bust out your windows.
This comes from a man who knows something about birds, so, take heed.
Also, in our building in downtown Chicago, the lower floors are parking, and a lot of birds were flying in the open door. Now they play the sounds of some type of bird (maybe it’s a hawk, I don’t know bird calls!). I don’t know if it works to keep birds out, but am thinking it must be somewhat viable if it is a marketable solution to a common problem.
Besides, you know you want to install something like that on your car since it will cause a lot of whiplash and consternation when people walk by.
