Well. So much for that.

[pasithea]

Our next door neighbors had to put their dog down last week. He was old and had lead a good life. He'd been suffering with cancer most of the summer and they'd taken him to be treated but he wasn't recovering and his health was getting worse so they did what was best for him. Poor guy.

And poor us, it turns out. Since we'd put up the fences, the deer hadn't bothered our garden though they'd been through the yard many times. It would appear though, this was in part due to London's vigil. Friday night, the deer tore down the fences on every terrace level of the garden and absolutely decimated it. They ate nearly everything to the ground. Tomato plans, beans, peas, cucumbers, squash, all the greens. Garden is ruined.

Next year I'm only planting things with huge thorns and vicious posions. Monkshood, castor beans, euphorbias, and maybe some kind of plant that sprouts rattlesnakes and sharks just for good measure. It's been hard enough growing a garden this year because of the lack of sun. We finally get to where we can harvest something and... I got TWO WHOLE TOMATOES before it was destroyed. :(

Or maybe I should see if my nutter parents will mail me my bow. There's no law specifically barring bow hunting in a residential area. Just 'firearms'. And since they're full of MY vegetables, it's not exactly like I'd be not being a vegetarian. Right? We're eating loophole tonight kids!

:(

You're still fucking fired, 2010.

Comments

[frith]

Drag about the garden, shame the deer seem to sneak in under cover of the night, but I can think of two solutions not involving butchering your own meat: (1) get your neighbours a new dog and (2) use hot wire (cattle fencing) to fence your vegetable garden.

[hebinekohime]

While it must be frustrating not to enjoy the fruits (and vegetables) of your labor, deer can't exactly drive to the store and buy food, and human habitation represents an encroachment on their environment. If the food you grow is able to feed deer, I would consider that a net utilitarian benefit.

I realize that the dominant opinion is that deer are horrible little cockroaches with hooves that ought to be shot for their 'theft', but I wanted to add my two cents.

[pasithea]

I don't kill the banana slugs that I find in my garden, I just toss them back out into the woods, though a single banana slug can eat an entire summer squash in an evening.

The deer on the other hand are not in need, they're just being greedy. There's plenty for them to eat in the forest around here, they'd just prefer to eat tomatoes instead of acorns and were willing to be destructive and invasive in order to do that. It's not even a drought year. It's been very wet and green this year. Also, our garden is tiny. It's not even enough food for one deer for one day.

Also, it's worth noting that in this environment, prior to human habitation, they would be predated upon by wolves, coyotes, mountain lions, and bears whereas now they have no real predators to speak of. In areas like where we live, deer populations are higher than they've been at virtually any time in the past. (In no small part because people who plant lawns instead of using native plants actually provide more food for the deer than the natural forest would have) Much like the gray squirrels and the feral pigs, they don't really belong here.

[hebinekohime]

You make some good points, but predation is inhumane (and probably more so coming from the natural side than from a clean shot). Contraceptives are a better solution if the population has to be kept in check.

Much like the gray squirrels and the feral pigs, they don't really belong here.

In theory, maybe not but we still have a duty of care IMO to animals that are here.

[pasithea]

I'm not really going to eat them! I'm a vegetarian.

And if I'm not going to eat them, I am definitely not going to kill or harm them either. When I was young and my family was poor, I hunted for food but it wasn't something I enjoyed. I was mostly just venting. It's what I do instead of actual violence.

[hebinekohime]

My apologies. I've tangled with pro-hunting people and people who thought it was a swell idea to round up and shoot feral pigs in the recent past, so the topic of invasive/overpopulated species is a sore point. I hope you find a way to keep your garden in the future.

[pasithea]

Yeah, no. :(

I grew up in rural Oklahoma where guys would drive around on the back roads and shoot stray cats and dogs that people had dumped. Or, if they were feeling particularly macho, they'd sometimes gather up dumped kittens, take them out in a field and break their legs so they'd mew loudly, then hide in the trees and shoot crows and coyotes that came out looking for an easy meal. I'm not okay with that sort of behavior.

[frith]

Contraceptives for deer is extremely difficult and costly. It is easier to protect the gardens and generally make the habitat less interesting for deer.

[frith]

I doubt the deer are being greedy, they are eating first the plants that are the most nutritious and the easiest to digest. Plants mount chemical defenses to make themselves unpalatable and difficult to digest (for example, tannins -- tannins bind to protein and make it indigestible). Our garden plants have usually been selected by us for their nutritional value. Seems like the deer approve.

Acorns are full of tannins. Ever bite into a raw acorn? Very bitter.

When wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone, the plants revived around the watercourses. This is not because the few wolves in the area were massacring the elk (they weren't) but because the _presence_ of wolves changed the land use by the elk. In short, the elk avoided waterways if there were wolves around.

You had a "wolf" living next door. Your "elk" stayed away that part of its habitat that included your garden. The "wolf" is gone, the "elk" roam where they wont. Mmmm, tomatoes.

Predators do _not_ control prey populations. It's the other way around: weather controls plants, plants control herbivores and herbivores control carnivores. Wolves, cougars, bears and coyotes do _not_ plan their appetites and fecundity around a census of prey populations. All population go through boom and bust cycles, there is no such thing as a stable balance of predators and prey. At best you'll see behavioural responses like the one I mentioned for the Yellowstone elk.

"Wet and green" does not equal "better than tomatoes". Most species of North American deer are browsers, not grazers. My guess your deer are either mule deer or blacktailed deer (same species). If I recall correctly, elk are the grazers. So your deer will eat some grass, but it's the protein-rich shoots and young leaves that are easiest to digest.

Blacktailed deer are not feral or introduced and they "belong here" more than we do, especially after we've built favorable habitat for them.

Habitat

[frith]

It's doubtful that pasithea's house or subdivision crowded out a local herd of deer... If there was a large local population, they were probably greatly reduced due to commercial hunting in the early 20th century. Commercial hunting has been replaced by sport hunting and game management and since then deer populations have been growing. Deer habitat tends to consist of mature forest for shelter and forest edges for food (young, short and generally more nutritious plants grow in areas of "secondary ecological succession" where forests meet fields). Our activities (farming, forestry, subdivisions) create ideal deer habitat, and our shrubs and gardens are ideal deer food. We built it and they came. We did not kick them out à la Over the Hedge.