THE SCARECROW
(click on any photo to enlarge)
We tested this in the front yard for a full day with the farmers head moving back and forth like he was in agony. Most people just shook their heads in disgust. At that point we knew we had a winner. Off he went to the back yard where we wired up 200 cornstalks to make his backdrop. See photo below to get the full scope of the cornstalks.
This photo still doesn't show all 200 cornstalks. They continue for another 14 feet to the left and another 5 feet to the right. We used steel fence posts every 10 feet and then ran heavy gauge wire from post to post at 2 feet and 4 four feet off the ground. Next we used wire ties to secure each cornstalk to the wires. Lot of work but they held up in 30 mph winds. Of course we didn't take into account what a pain in the rear they'd be to take down. Cutting them down was easy but I recycled them so I had to cut each wire tie back off. Just call me Mr. Foresight.
Our unfortunate farmer had a fan motor in his chest that made his head twitch. The head had a sensor in the neck that activated a scream. With a fog machine and a strobe light playing on it at night a lot of folks were reluctant to get too close. The ones that did would get the tar scared out of them as the fog machine would cut loose with a blast of fog from out of the corn. A nice loud hiss and a cloud of fog would roll out at them. No one lingered very long.