Oh, Deer!

A brief conversation with my next door neighbor last evening yielded some insight into the recent decapitation of several of my sunflowers. It turns out they have had the same problem...only their sunflowers are inside their fenced-in garden, not out in the open like mine. Melissa said Rob suspected deer because of some damage he noticed on his corn as well as the sunflowers. I mentioned this to Chris as we spent yet another evening weeding the vegetable garden. I am happy to report that most of the major weeding is complete and what remains is merely maintenance weeding - pulling up the rogue crabgrass here and there. Whew!

Actually, let me back up just a bit. Before Chris and I talked about the deer and the sunflowers or even started weeding last night...as we were walking to the vegetable garden, I saw a rabbit in the garden. This was an average-sized rabbit and somehow that little bugger managed to weasel his way through the 2" x 4" opening in the garden fence and continue to eat our broccoli and cauliflower plants. The nerve! Our neighbors have the same type of fence that we do and this year, Rob ran a second, smaller fence around the bottom of the garden - one with smaller openings to ward off the rabbits. This might be what we need to do next year. We really thought the 2" x 4" openings would be too small for rabbits and didn't expect much trouble from chipmunks. I guess we underestimated the wiliness of our resident rabbits!

OK, back to the sunflowers and the deer. So I mentioned to Chris that Rob had put in the additional fencing to keep the rabbits out and now his concern this year was deer. We knew that a 4' fence would not keep an aggressive or determined deer out of our garden, but we hoped it would fend off a lazy or unambitious deer. So far for us (knock on wood!) that has been the case in the vegetable garden. But that isn't where my sunflowers are located. Mine are out in the open in the garden with the black-eyed Susans, and I've lost three so far.

Last evening as we wrapped up our weeding and started to make our way to the shed to put our supplies away, we stopped to check on the sunnies and Suzies. And that is when we saw it...the teeniest, tiniest little fawn hoof print I have ever seen. I cannot imagine how little this baby Bambi must be because the hoof print was 1", maybe 1.5" in length in the dirt which makes prints look bigger anyway. Ugh. I am not sure how I feel about this. I hunt deer. Granted, I've yet to wax one, but I am a hunter. Come December, deer = venison = stocked freezer. Even now, in July, I am considering them a pest and trying to keep them out of my vegetable garden. But the thought of this little fawn...argh...it just tugs on my heart. Can I be angry if I lose sunflowers to Bambi? I need to think about this some more...and see what other damage Bambi inflicts in the next few days. Let me just say this...if Bambi takes down my giant sunny...there will be trouble! Bambi...you've been warned!

Until next time, keep your eyes open for wild wonders...