PETER SAGAL, HOST:
We want to remind everyone to join us here most weeks at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago. For tickets and more information, just go to wbez.org, or you can find a link at our website, which waitwait.npr.org. Right now, panel, time for you to answer some questions about this week's news.
Paula, police in China have a new weapon in the war on crime. Law enforcement agents in one troubled region are now actively promoting the use of what?
PAULA POUNDSTONE: Fly swatters.
SAGAL: No, I'll give you a hint. I may be one, punk, but yours is cooked.
POUNDSTONE: Goose? Oh, yeah, they're using geese.
SAGAL: The geese police.
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SAGAL: Quote: "Among all poultry, geese are known for being extremely vigilant and having excellent hearing," said one Chinese police chief, explaining his hiring of geese as kind of night watch-birds. This implies they've tried other kinds of poultry as guards.
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SAGAL: The turkeys looked good in the uniform but kept staring up into the rain and drowning.
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SAGAL: And the swans are good but are way too egotistic. They come on in like the FBI of crime fighting. The geese, though, are great. They say one thief was caught after he drugged two guard dogs, but didn't count on geese squad waiting on him inside the building. Police found the man pooped on to within an inch of his life.
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SAGAL: Crime is down. Well, guys trying to steal bread is down, other crimes are pretty much unaffected.
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SAGAL: And of course, the real drawback is that every fall, your whole police force migrates south.
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POUNDSTONE: They tried ducks, but Daffy had anger control problems. So what specifically are the geese supposed to do?
SAGAL: The geese apparently, we found out that this is actually something that people are doing for years. We used them to guard - apparently Americans use them to guard European bases in the '50s. And Roman legions used to use geese. The thing about geese is...
POUNDSTONE: It's ridiculous.
SAGAL: ...make a lot of noise when you walk into their area. So if you put geese out in your yard, say, and just leave them there, and somebody walks in, they'll make a huge squawking noise. That's what they're good for. And they might even chase the guy because you know what geese are like.
MAZ JOBRANI: So it's like an alarm.
SAGAL: Yeah.
JOBRANI: Why don't they just get an alarm?
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JOBRANI: Just put an alarm in.
POUNDSTONE: Yeah. Good point. And if they want to make it more geese-like, the alarm could occasionally poop.
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SAGAL: Yeah, that's true.
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