By Jeremy Sollars
A PIERCING whine – unlike the ones which emanate from small children inside the car – coming from below your bumper bar may be the trick to avoiding collisions with kangaroos, says Warwick’s Neville Black.
Mr Black contacted the Free Times after reading our story last week on the safety risks posed by roos at the Morgan Park Raceway, saying he swore by his ‘sonic animal guards’, otherwise known as ‘shoo roos’.
He said the devices – which retail for less than $10 a throw – emitted a high-pitched noise undetectable by human ears but which seem to scare the living daylights out of our macropod mates.
The small plastic cones, with a hole at the front of the tube and an outlet below it, can be easily attached to the front of your vehicle, typically below the grill or in the spaces near your headlights.
The normal motion of the vehicle out on the road over 50km/h generates sufficient air passage through the devices to cause the noise, with manufacturers claiming the sound wave can be heard by animals more than two kilometres away “in ideal conditions”.
“We’d had a few collisions with kangaroos over the years, some of them did a huge amount of damage,” he told the Free Times.
“Someone told me about ‘shoo roos’ and I went out and bought some and do you know, the roos run the other way.
“I absolutely swear by them – we haven’t had a single kangaroo come near us on the road since I put them on the car.”
Mr Black said the only problem was automated car washes which could unseat the devices, but at around $6 for a pack of two at discount auto parts stores it was inexpensive to replace them if they became dislodged.
A report on management options for the kangaroos at Morgan Park is being prepared for the council by the Morgan Park Users Group.
