Gotcha! However it is woking in my environment :/ (and yes, I removed the 'spec/rails' folder). I believe it works with Rails 4, but not with Rails 3. Look at the current code of [activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext/object/try.rb](https://github.com/rails/rails/blob/b4fa6516c1fc81f7da2a92adee9634d2771b7df0/activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext/object/try.rb#L41-L47) it check with `respond_to?`.