[Leica] Down with Bambi

[tedgrant at shaw.ca (tedgrant at shaw.ca)]

DEER IN YOUR GARDEN?

My my how devastating to your efforts of planting flowers and nurturing 
seeds to a state of beauty to come out of your home early some morning and 
there they are..... THE DEER, DOE'S AND FAWNS munching away having their 
breakfast!

ANNOYING???????? I suppose I could use far stronger wording, however. Take a 
deep breath, stand quietly and watch! And if you should be bright enough to 
have a camera handy start photographing these beautiful animals for 
posterity. Or send photos to friends and family who live in the asphalt 
jungles of town wherever? Then hear or read their responses of... "WOW! How 
lucky you are, real wild deer right there in your front yard? Man is that 
ever neat! They're so beautiful and the accolades are amazing!

How can I say this and be so gentle about it? Quite easy really it's 
called.....

"GET OVER IT! AS I'VE HAD TO COPE WITH THESE GARDEN EATING CRITTERS EVERY 
YEAR FOR 30 YEARS WHERE WE LIVE RIGHT IN OUR CITY NEIGHBOURHOOD!"  And yes 
I've wanted to shoot them at times, yelled at them, tried to shooo them off 
by yelling and whatever fashion of noise or action you can imagine. Shooting 
of course is completely out of the question "deer hunting season or not!" 
The police and neighbours take a very dim view of that craziness and in 
Canada not every house has a gun.

There are some simple things that sometimes work: Plant flowers and shrubs 
deer don't like, check with your local garden works shops. Even that doesn't 
always work. :-(

But my wife came up with the idea of great ideas last year.:-)

She bought a huge number of plastic hand made flowers of a variety that 
would normally grow in our area. I set to work hand planted them all, put 
some in baskets to hang off the lower tree limbs and added some real ones 
mixed in about them. But the plastic took precedence.

Guess what, the deer came, sniffed things, stood around with a questioning 
look on their faces and left!:-)

DEER PROBLEM SOLVED! Oh they came by this year, some along the other day, a 
doe with a tiny just born fawn, had to be only a few days old it was so 
small. Beautiful!

And yep I've taken pictures and posted some to the LUG gallery a few times 
in past years.

But I never could understand hunting them for food when the big chain 
grocery stores are loaded with more food than a fat person can eat! So why 
shoot, or as we had happen here. A complete dimwit, supposedly hunter using 
bow and arrows to hunt them. Archaic morons!
However that came to a screaming halt very quickly when a doe was found with 
two arrows sticking out of her struggling to cross a street a block away.  A 
huge number of locals thought the arrow hunting people might like to have an 
arrow placed firmly into the hunter where it might hurt the most. Definitely 
constipation would follow! :-)

The doe found with the arrows unfortunately had to be put down by the Game 
Warden as it was so badly injured.

Like I say, get over it and don't whine because you spent a bunch of money 
buying flowers when you know you have deer that will find and eat them. The 
well made phony flowers look just as natural and beautiful as the real and 
they last usually a couple of years or more.

If they become a little dusty looking?  Just gently spray them down with the 
hose as though they were real and they're fresh looking to go another month!

See how easy it is to live with our four legged friends of beauty! :-) Go 
Bambi go! :-)

cheers,
Dr. ted :-)