It’s been over two weeks since our neighbors put out headless decoys to keep the Canada geese off their lawn. For those wondering if it works, the answer is: sort of.

But before I tell you what I’ve seen, here’s something interesting that I’ve learned since I first posted about this. The geese are headless on purpose. I don’t know where they heard about it, but the neighbors were told a yard littered with plastic geese corpses would scare the geese away. So that’s why the heads are not attached to the bodies (not because the kids were lazy, as I had assumed).

While there haven’t been many geese in the yard, the couple that first wondered about the local serial killer keeps returning. They show up daily and have even been right in amongst all the decoys, plucking grass. Apparently, they are attached to their territory and a slew of bodies won’t change their minds.

On the other hand, we haven’t had any flocks of geese in the last two weeks. So it’s a partial win for the neighbors, although I think over time the geese will be less and less afraid until they ignore the decoys entirely.

An unexpected side effect is that they have completely bewildered the crows. Just this morning I saw a crow hopping around one of the decoys, clearly trying to figure out what it was and why it was there. It’s main thought was: why do people put out plastic replicas of food? And whenever I think of wax fruit, I am right there with him.