Deer Proofing

The deer snuck into the garden last night. They poodled the beans, yep, they gave the bean plants a poodle cut by eating all the leaves in easy range and leaving the poof of leaves at the top of the plant. This is not a style that you want to see in your garden, not at all. Once I saw the damage, I prowled the deer fence, looking for the vulnerable spot, the place where the enemy had breached the defensive wall. Did the miscreants jump over the sagging top of the deer fence? Did the 4 legged marauders sneak between the rails of the gate? Had the deer tunneled under the plum tree and emerged next to the greenhouse, stopping to shake the dirt off their backs before they munched the pole beans and chewed up the strawberries? I do not underestimate these deer!

I looked high and low for evidence and I found it about 2 feet off the ground. I found one hair, stuck to the chain that held the gate closed. Using my best CSI technique honed by hours misspent watching mysteries, I collected the bit of evidence and examined it under my lens of my microscope. It was a sturdy hair, short, brown, but tipped with white. It could have rubbed off the back of a deer as it slid under the chain. We do have some brown horses on the farm, so I went out to the barn and collected a few horse hairs. None had the distinctive white tip and, though a pony will rub up against anything (preferably a human in clean clothes), the ponies are all a bit too chubby to fit through the gap by the gate. The suspect hair was not a dog hair, the dogs have longer hair. It wasn’t a cat hair, the cats were not going to force their way into the garden when they could simply pester the gardener by meowing at the garden gate. No, this was a deer hair and it gave me the clue. It told me where they were entering into my vegie garden so that they could break my plants.

The solution was easy. I planted a steel post in the middle of the gap between the gate and the post. ‘Mind the gap,’ I thought to myself with a chuckle. I also put extra deer fencing over the gate rails and secured the whole structure with two chains. I set the critter cam on a post that faced the gate. I want to see the deer when they find out that their late night picnics are over. I hope all of this works. I hope I solved the crime and that my garden is safe, my plants protected from things that go bump in the night. I will check in the morning and see if I have any beans left…