Since its founding in Chicago in 1964, the company has developed 25 bird repellent products, from perching spikes to a machine that creates ultrasonic sounds that send Canada Geese, pigeons and other birds flapping away.

Mona Zemsky, marketing manager for Bird-X, says most people don't see them as pests, but birds can carry more than 60 different diseases. She says their waste poses serious health risks and invites lawsuits for businesses that don't clean up the mess.

"I know a Canada Goose can defecate over a pound a day," Zemsky says during a tour of the company's manufacturing facility in the Kinzie Industrial Corridor.

And Bob O'Neill, president of the Grant Park Advisory Council, says Canada Geese have become a real problem in the park, especially during late summer when movies are shown in the park.

"On Butler Field just south of Daley Bicentennial, we encourage people to bring a blanket and sit out on the grass, but the problem is they are sitting on goose droppings," O'Neill says.

He says the officials sprayed the park this summer with a non-toxic repellent similar to those offered by Bird-X, but they still must find a long-term solution for the pesky geese.

Zemsky says the company's most popular product, the $500 QuadBlaster, emits ultrasonic sound waves at high frequencies only birds can hear. According to Zemsky, the human ear can only hear sounds within 17-18 kilohertz, while the QuadBlaster starts at 22 kilohertz and goes up to 30 kilohertz. Zemsky says the product works well at keeping birds out of large warehouse spaces like the one Bird-X operates. Other products at Bird-X replicate bird distress cries and sounds made by predators to avert pesky birds.

Zemsky says the U.S. Food and Drug Administration places tight regulations on the handling of food and other products in warehouses. Losing a pallet of potatoes or aspirin because of one bird bomb can mean hundreds of dollars for a company, she says.

Another product, known as the GatorGuard, is simply a floating replica of an alligator head used to scare birds away from ponds and other bodies of water. She says the GatorGuard works in places like Chicago where alligators do not exist because birds naturally see them as a predator.

"The reason the Gator works is because it is an instinctive fear, not a learned fear," Zemsky says.

Richard Seid, founder and chairman of the company, says the origin of Bird-X was somewhat serendipitous. In the early 1960s, Seid says his brother was the principal for a company that manufactured automotive electrical accessories.

"They discovered that one of the lights they made had the effect of routing birds out of the upper regions of a dimly-lit warehouse," Seid says.

The company began manufacturing the light and selling it via direct mail. They eventually formed Bird-X a few years later, Seid says.

Since then, the company has grown every year, selling its products around the world and at home to well-known establishments such as Wrigley Field and the Chicago Transit Authority.

Although their droppings can be little more than a mild annoyance to many people, Zemsky says it spreads histoplasmosis, a disease caused by fungus from soil enriched by bird and bat droppings.

The Illinois Department of Public Health Web site describes the disease as uncommon but warns that histoplasmosis is a "flu-like illness" that causes respiratory problems, fever, chest pains and general malaise. Serious cases can result in death.

In areas such as the Mississippi and Ohio river valleys, where the airborne spores are more prevalent, as much as 80 percent of the population has contracted the disease, but most did not know it, according to the IDPH.

Those with compromised immune systems, such as people with AIDS or leukemia, are more susceptible to histoplasmosis, and according to the IDPH, as many as 5 percent of Americans living with AIDS will contract the disease.

Zemsky says Bird-X offers a wide array of products for home use as well as large-scale industrial use.

"The home air-conditioning unit is a particularly bad problem because if bird droppings accumulate near the ventilation system, the dropping and the dust from the droppings can get sucked into the ventilation, which can harm people inside if they are breathing in that fecal dust," she says.

Aside from the health risks, Zemsky says bird waste can damage property and lower its value.

"If you are known suddenly as the rental property with all the bird defecation on top, maybe people don't want to rent at that building," she says. "Or if you are the town home complex with the Canada Geese droppings people might think twice, so when you talk property devaluation that hits home with a lot of people."

Worried homeowners don't necessarily have to go broke protecting themselves from birds, though;

Bird-X provides a range of products running from $8 dollars to almost $800. And Zemsky says all of Bird-X products are humane; the key to getting rid of birds is annoying them away, not killing them, she says.