The Little Deers

No, this is not the deer that was in my back yard last night!  It belongs to Gerald H..  I laughed and laughed when he emailed me this picture today.  I have to admit he was not the only one who contacted me today and suggested I get out my gun and take matters into my own hands.  I have been at war with deer since I moved into this house.  I am not out in the boonies but in a neighborhood on the edge of a greenbelt which boarders the train line that runs from Seattle to Portland.  For some reason the deer like my yard.

When I first moved here a doe and two fawns spent every day napping in my back yard.  At first I thought it was cute.  That is until I planted a garden.  They thought they had found Sizzler's for deer and began to stop by the salad bar often.

I did some research and found a product that claimed to keep deer out of the garden.  It is a netting that is easy to put up, easy to see through and inexpensive.  I invested in a couple of rolls and put it up.  For a few weeks all was fine but as the season progressed and my garden started to flourish the trouble began.  I had put the netting up eight feet high thinking it would be high enough.  Well, it seems the deer were high jumpers and one morning there they were feasting on beet greens looking quite content.  They had not even broken out in a sweat when they jumped the fence.

Next came hanging bars of smelly soap, hair balls from the beauty shop, aol advertisement discs, silver ribbon, urinating around the fence, spraying the veggies with hot pepper juice, firecrackers and a sling shot.  I got pretty good with the sling shot but the silver ball ammunition didn't seem to faze them.  Nothing worked.

The ultimate moment came when I saw the deer jump and dive right through the deer netting.  That was it.  I called the company in New Hampshire.  I explained what had happened and offered to send them pictures of the hole.  They did not flinch and offered to send me back my money.  At least I had my investment back but now I had a fence complete with netting that had huge holes in it. 

So here we are five years later and the problem is still here.  I considered putting up an electric fence but when I priced it out it would have made the cost of tomatoes reach $12.78 a piece!  I am not called the Frugal Fraulein for nothing.  I could not bear to spend that kind of money and decided to just plant more seed each year and be watching for deals on wood to build a different kind of fence. 

I have to admit the gun is gaining appeal.  I have never shot anything other than a tin can and paper targets.  I will need to shift gears from thinking about Bambi to meat in a canning jar!