Fake alligator head rids neighbourhood of defecating geese

Jim Orsello is the hero of his Woodbury, Minnesota, neighbourhood for solving a miserable problem - defecating geese. His apartment complex was thrown into a fecal furor this spring when an infestation of geese carpeted lawns and sidewalks with their unpleasant mess.

Orsello's solution was as old as nature itself. He installed a floating alligator head in a nearby pond. Today, the geese, and their dreaded dung, are gone. "It worked very well," said Orsello, a 67-year-old living in Applewood Pointe, a retirement complex.



He first saw a similar decoy gator head while visiting a relative in St. Louis. He didn't know, however, if it would work 800 miles north of the native habitat of alligators. Fortunately, geese aren't known for their brains. They were unable to figure out that alligators don't live in states known for ice fishing.

Orsello said the alligator head doesn't fool anything else, including his neighbours and their pets. Even ducks aren't deceived, he said, and treat it like any other floating piece of debris. But geese hate it. The head consists of a rubber mask stretched over a frame lined with plastic foam. It floats freely in the pond and comes with sinister yellow eyes to strike primordial fear into avian hearts.