Returned home today after being away a few days. Deer had eaten all of the beets, all of the swiss chard, half the beans and the tops from the carrots. They left the squash and turnips. Revenge will be mine Nov. 17. (first day of deer season.
Oh, ugh. How awful!
Pat
Until the food runs out. Then it's every man for himself.
Dan
Our garden is *inside* our dogs' fenced area. Even though the dogs sleep in the house at night, so far this has kept the deer away. I think it's the dog smell which must permeate the yard.
I have my fingers crossed that it continues....
I can remember when I lived in northern NJ and had four dogs (three of them large). The deer would be calmly picking up fallen apples from the ground, about six feet outside a chain link fence - inside of which four dogs were barking hysterically. Brazen deer!
So far, the deer here in rural northcentral PA don't seem to be made from the same cloth as the brazen NJ deer. So far.
Pat
Never fear, they'll catch on to domesticity soon enough. ;) Here, you have to have a minimum 6 foot fence (7 is even more reliable) to keep them out. We could never afford that much fence and it would look like a prison yard at that height. LOL The dogs here chase them constantly to no avail. The neighbor's boxer has made it his mission in life to chase them. When my DH confronted a young buck in the garage, it screamed in surprise (i did not know deer made any sounds actually) and then dashed off, running through the upper garden like a charging rhino. Occasionally, I get out the sling shot and nail one in the hind quarters just hard enough to sting really bad. That also helps for a day or 2 lol. Black bears are reported in Eastern Missouri for the first time in like a century so it will be interesting to see what happens.
I hope they continue to be wimpy deer! :) Otherwise, I could leave my dogs out at night in summer. I will if I have to.
We have black bears around here, lots of them.
Two summers ago one broke our neighbor's bird feeder. I heard loud cracking noises at 4 am, and the next morning the
1" thick metal pipe supporting the bird feeder had been bent down to the ground, in a U-shape. Nothing but a bear could possibly have done it.Last summer, a woman who lives about 1/2 mile from us left her garage door open (mistake!) while she quickly ran to the store one afternoon. When she returned, there was a black bear in her garage. We *never* leave our garage door open!
Pat
OMG now that'll put some curl in your hair. Hmmmm..... I will definitely keep all that in mind. The latest bear report (that my DH insists I must have imagined LOL) has them only one county away.
We have had such a dry summer that my city has banned putting out garbage until the morning of p/u day. All garbage that may stink can be stored in the freezer until said day. Fines are levied for infractions of the law! The reason being that the bears have so little to eat ( berries dried up on the bushes or habitats burned out due to immense forest fires) that they are coming into the city limits to pilfer garbage. When they become habituated to eating garbage and lose fear of humans, they are extermely dangerous and have to be killed.What a shame!
Our neighbor did this once. Their 4-year old daughter called me over the phone, crying hysterically that there was a bear in her garage and nobody else was home. I had to illegaly shoot the bear in the butt with a pellet gun because the cops ALWAYS take well over an hour to respond to bear emergencies (they don't wanna have their names plastered over the papers and get death threats from the PETA freaks).
BTW, the bear did move out of the garage very quickly once it got a pellet up the butt. Screaming at it did nothing.
Dan nw NJ
Yes, that is a shame. It's a shame we can't equalize the rain/dryness too - you've had drought, we've almost drowned all summer.
We've had an exceedingly wet spring and summer: but I live in the Appalachian Mountains in a very rural area, and we have bears around every year - they just normally live here and they are generally not a problem because most people here leave them strictly alone.
We have two large dogs who bark so I wouldn't expect ever to see a bear in our yard - the dogs barking would scare it off. Nevertheless, we have a shotgun, just in case...
Pat
For starters, it's exceedingly irresponsible to leave a child of that age home alone. I hate to see anything like that...
Pat
Hm. Here in E. Nebraska, deer aren't as big a problem as they are a little further to the east, where there are significant woodland areas, though they do inhabit greenbelts and river valleys.
That said, there have been numberous reports in the past couple years of
*mountain lions* in eastern Nebraska and western Iowa - a year or so ago, someone actually hit and killed a lion on the road in western Iowa, and there've been a number of reports from eastern Iowa as well. I'd imagine that a few dozen cougars would help the deer problem signifncantly. : )Jason
Oh my now that sounds like a plan.:)
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