WOODBURY — The fake alligator head floating in a pond didn’t fool the ducks in a Twin Cities area suburb, but it was enough to trick their witless feathered friends.

Jim Orsello’s retirement complex in Woodbury has been overrun with geese this spring and the stinky mess they leave behind. So the 67-year-old Orsello figured he’d borrow a decoy trick from a relative in Missouri. He wondered whether the rubber alligator head he found online would actually work in a place where alligators are found only at the zoo.

Orsello’s neighbors, their pets and even the ducks weren’t fooled. The alligator head has kept the geese and their dirty dung away.