Bambi's Buffet

No, this blog isn’t about a new eatery at Disney’s Magic Kingdom (although it would be a catchy name for one.  Hey Disney – Call me!).  The Bambi’s Buffet I’m referencing is my yard.

Now before I get too worked up, let me say that I am by nature a huge animal lover.  I adore Earth’s creatures big and small.  We are big hikers and love encountering wildlife while on the trail.  I would never hunt.  Could never see the thrill in killing another creature for sport.

However (and there is always a however), my lovely bride and I have a passionate love/hate relationship with deer.  We have woods surrounding our house on 3 sides.  We’ve seen lots of critters in those woods over the years.  Squirrels, raccoons, skunks, foxes, hawks, bats, and of course lots of deer.

The deer are beautiful to behold.  They are gentle, quiet, graceful creatures and we all get a charge out of watching a mother and her babies walking through our woods. 

If only they stayed in the woods.

Instead, they have gotten bolder and bolder over the years.  Coming into our yard and eating everything in our gardens. 

They love the hostas. They munch the mums.  They adore the aster.  They chow down on the mews.  Even the begonias are not safe.  The begonias aren’t their first choice but they get less fussy once everything else is eaten.

Every year, my lovely bride and I (to a far lesser extent) spend lots of time planting, weeding and tending to our gardens around our property.  And like clockwork, the deer show up and devour hundreds of dollars of plants, and make waste of dozens of hours of gardening time.

We tried sprinkling all of the plants with Costco size containers of cayenne pepper.  Turns out the deer are fans of spicy food.

We tried motion sensors in the gardens but they made too much noise and they would be triggered so frequently that the deterrent effect eventually wore off.

Our lawn guy has offered on many occasions to bring his hunting bow to our house and take care of the deer for us.  We declined because that would be wrong. (Right?)

So what did we do?  We erected a huge fence around each of the gardens.  So now the deer can’t get to the plants, but we also look like we live in a maximum security detention facility.  And we are the inmates. 

We still see the deer walking around through the woods and I wonder what they think of our self-imposed imprisonment.  Can deer laugh?  I actually thought I heard one laugh the other day.

At least they are pretty to look at.  And for now at least, so are our gardens.

Frosty