Cape Officials Call in Fake Gators to Scare Geese

The Cape Cod National Seashore is trucking in gators to scare away geese.

They're fake alligator heads that seashore officials hope are realistic enough to spook the Canadian geese who like to frequent a remote section of Blackwater Pond in Provincetown.

The Cape Cod Times reports that the geese are devouring a rare aquatic plant called the golden club that grows at the pond.

Hundreds of the plants used to carpet the pond's surface decades ago. But the geese's appetite for the endangered plant is so voracious that there are barely two dozen plants remaining.

Seashore plant ecologist Stephen Smith says he hasn't found any hard scientific data that the decoys work.

But he said at only $30 per fake gator head, he thought it was worth a shot.

[Associated Press]