Anyone planning a fun-filled trip to Orlando, Florida, had best beware: the city is a veritable bulls-eye for aerial poop assaults by resident birds.

In no way connected to the large, anthropomorphic mouse ensconced at the nearby Disney World Resort, the local population of cormorants -- a type of lanky seabird that often settles on freshwater lakes and ponds if the fishing is good -- is gaining a soiled reputation for bombarding the waterfront shopping and recreational area of Lake Eola with guano grenades.

No one is safe -- automobiles, sunbathers, and guys in business suits have all fallen victim to this rain of terror.

Most townsfolk seem stoic about the situation; some even find it comical. Business owners aren't too thrilled about it, though, and neither are Orlando's civic leaders, who have posted warning signs next to the area where the birds are roosting and dropping loads.

But beyond the blend of amusement and irritation, I'm wondering why no one has tapped into the guano as a money-making resource yet. After all, the cormorants' South American relatives are the cash cows of a huge guano-fertilizer industry in Peru. Mountains of the stuff are collected off the rocks, dried, pulverized and bagged for export around the world, making gardeners everywhere happy. And the industry rakes in millions of dollars a year.

So why not Orlando? Here's what they should do: encourage the cormorants to take up permanent, year-round residency by offering them all of the tons of discarded food that Disney and Busch Gardens throw out daily; then stand back and wait for manna to fall from heaven, so to speak. Scoop it up and deliver it to Disney World and Busch Gardens to feed their big, lush landscapes and tropical flower gardens. Voila! Recycling! There's gotta be a plan in there somewhere.