CASTALIA

Lake Erie is pretty far north for alligators, but officials at Ohio Veterans Home are hoping geese don't know that.

OVH has put phony alligator heads in the home's two ponds in its latest effort to dissuade geese from hanging out at the home and pooping on the grounds.

"It's not saying we don't like birds. It's a health issue," said Gary Chetwood, a spokesman for the home.

The geese leave markers of their presence all over the place, Chetwood said.

"Some of the spouses are out, pushing their husbands in wheelchairs, and they roll through it," he said.

OVH police chief Gabriel Ferencz said the alligator heads are decoys 32 inches long, made of plastic and anchored to the bottom of the ponds. The OVH bought six of them at a nominal cost and deployed them about a week ago.

So far, the gator heads are a partial success in rattling the local geese that stay in the area year-round.

"They're up on the banks but they're avoiding the water," Ferencz said. "That doesn't totally solve our problem yet."

Still, Ferencz hopes when flocks of Canada geese appear overhead during their fall migration, they'll see the gator heads and avoid stopping at the ponds.

The chief said the OVH wants to do a goose roundup to remove the geese from the grounds. To get permission from state officials to do that, the OVH has to show that it's tried everything else to keep geese away.

The OVH has tried a variety of ways the last few years to scare off the geese, including black bags on sticks, explosive sounds and even decoys of dead geese.

None have provided a permanent fix.

The dead geese decoys seemed to work for awhile, but the geese eventually got used to them, Ferencz said.

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