As well as their traditional canine companions, border patrollers in South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region now have geese as helpers to prevent illegal border crossings and other misbehavior amid pressure to control the COVID-19 epidemic.

Two border patrollers, together with two geese and a dog, comprise a basic epidemic checkpoint squad in Longzhou county in Chongzuo. The geese are now frontline public health defenders, Chinanews.com reported on Saturday.  

A goose is sensitive to sounds and will squawk loudly if it hears anything abnormal or sees strangers. A local villager named Li Fei told the media that he and his partner caught two people trying to cross the border illegally at midnight on December 2, 2021, with the help of the two geese. 

Longzhou, which borders Vietnam, has found that using geese in border control is even more effective than dogs. 

Li Guotao, epidemic control chief in Longzhou county, said the pressure to prevent imported cases is enormous given the complicated geographical situation and numerous hidden paths, adding that the county has 184 kilometers of land border and 22 kilometers of river border.

Photo:China News Service

Geese and dogs help a lot in alerting patrols to illegal crossings at night, Li said. 

Chongzuo city has a total of 533 kilometers of border, with 400 dogs and 500 geese assisting with the border control work at more than 300 checkpoints. 

Using the geese shows wisdom in epidemic control based on local realities and resources, observers said, warning that border villages face an arduous task in defending the entire nation against imported cases. Any lax control at the long and circuitous border areas could ruin China's hard-won dynamic zero-COVID situation.