HIGHLIGHT: WASHINGTON

Bangor: The Navy is using the presence of hawks to keep gulls away from the Hood Canal pier. The pier hosts a majority of the country’s ballistic-missile submarines whose paramount duty is to retaliate against a nuclear attack on the United States. It had been recently bombarded with gull poop, soiling the subs, facilities and even the workforce. So the Navy turned to five Harris’s hawks. Their job: make the pier as inhospitable to gulls as the gulls have made it these past few years for the humans. “It is their presence alone that makes the gulls uncomfortable and keeps them away,” said Gretchen Albrecht, a zookeeperturned-falconer hired by the Navy to help solve the problem.

PROVIDED BY US NAVY Gretchen Albrecht, a falconer for Inka Falcon bird abatement services, handles a Harris’s hawk at Trident Refit Facility Bangor.