On North Tenmile Lake, living surrounded by and interacting with wildlife is a given. In our view, they were here before us and so we try to live with them as harmoniously as possible. However, we have our limits when it comes to how animals and plants encroach upon our living space.
Our boathouse is two story – the bottom story is a garage where we moor our boat and launch kayaks and other water toys from. The top story is a one bedroom apartment (it’s available for vacation rentals – see the ‘Vacation Rentals’ tab). In our first year here, the interior of the boathouse garage remained undisturbed by the wildlife. In the spring of 2023, I began noticing wet spots on the east side of the boathouse garage deck opposite the door, along with deposits of poop. From the consistency and content of the droppings (I’m sure most readers don’t want me to get too descriptive here), the invaders were most likely Canada Geese – big, noisy waterfowl that seem to be here year round. Though there is a plastic sheet on the bottom of the garage door that extends to the surface of the water, they most likely push through it, or simply dive underneath it. It’s a common problem here – often people’s docks are littered with goose poop. It’s understandable – it’s a level and protected place to rest. We’re sympathetic to that but still don’t want the mess in the boathouse, especially since we do short term rentals with it.

I tried in vain to catch the criminals in the act, but no matter when I popped into the boathouse, it was empty, though the wet spots and poop were there and fresh. I thought of setting up a camera in there, but I have grand plans for putting cameras throughout the property and want it well thought out rather than slapdash, and I’m just not there yet.
At first I tried a motion-activated battery powered floodlight, thinking that it turning off and on constantly would startle the geese enough that they wouldn’t feel comfortable resting there. It did not work…the puddles and poop continued unabated. The reprobates were completely unimpressed. If they could have left me a message (which they kind of did…in poop), it would have something like ‘nice try, loser’.
I then went ahead and purchased this motion-activated control from Amazon:
When it senses movement, it energizes the attached 3-prong AC plug. Initially I connected this to my pancake compressor, which is obnoxiously loud when it is running, reasoning the noise would drive unwanted visitors away. Obviously I did not think that one fully through. It seemed to work beautifully for a few days – no messes. However, after that, the poop parties resumed unabated. This was a WTF moment for me until I figured out what you probably already have – once the compressor is fully pressurized, it will stop running. If it’s full, energizing its power source won’t do squat.
“Okay”, so I reasoned, “the motion sensor and loud noises seem to work. How else can I get a short term loud noise raised when the motion sensor is tripped?” The answer was this alarm siren horn:
It puts out an incredibly loud (120 dB) siren burst for only 2-3 seconds before it stops automatically, until the motion sensor triggers it again to emit another short term burst of noise. Although the horn is designed to be battery operated, you can easily convert it to AC power using this kit:
It’s as easy as inserting the two pre-stripped wire leads from the siren into the provided solderless clip, snap them closed, and plug the provided transformer into the clip.
After positioning the motion sensor to cover the entry to the boathouse, and area that the animals liked to bed down in, we’ve not had any trouble in the boathouse since – as long as I remember to turn the system back on after turning it off! When we take our boat out, or when I’m doing work in the boathouse, I turn off the alarm so I’m not constantly blasted by noise. Sometimes I forget to turn it back on, and then the messes come back. As long as it’s on, the critters stay away. Sometimes I can hear the alarm tripping frequently down there – it sounds like Rosco P. Coltrane is chasing the Duke boys round and round the boathouse. Fortunately it’s not very loud to us in the main house and doesn’t continue long.
Here’s a picture of the whole setup:

And here’s a short clip of the alarm in operation:
An area of improvement here would be to plug it into a smart switch so you could control it from your phone. That would allow you to turn it off before entering the boathouse, and re-enable it after leaving in the boat. It would also let you set a schedule to automatically re-enable itself after say an hour, so that it is not mistakenly left off for long periods. Yesterday when we returned to the boathouse, we saw a small otter running around inside of it. The alarm was deactivated because we had used the boat to leave. Fortunately the otter didn’t seem to have done any damage, but it would not have been in there at all if the alarm had been on.
If you don’t like the idea of loud noises, then something else could be plugged into the motion sensor outlet that is sufficiently startling. I did try to find a miniaturized version of those tube men that you see at car dealerships, but couldn’t find something that would work and was cheap enough.