GET GROWING!
THEIR ALL-YOU-CAN EAT BUFFET IN MY BACKYARD
LEFT: I went out and bought clear plastic forks in bulk from a dollar store and stuck them in pots. RIGHT: As you can see, it worked…but only some extent!
By LADYBUG
As a little girl, when I giggled over Elmer Fudd saying, “Shhh...be vewy, vewy quiet, I’m hunting wabbits,” I never imagined I’d one day be driven to despair by the wascawwy (rascally) creatures myself.
And not just rabbits. Squirrels, a loon or two, and often a huge raccoon on the deck, they all feel free to run about my garden, making off with the fruits of my labour, thumbing their pert little noses at me – or so I imagine – as I try to out-manoeuvre them.
We had creatures in our old garden too, and I recall our neighbour Bruno offering to bring out his gun so we could have rabbit stew. Unsure of how serious he was – he did go hunting each fall, after all – I hastily put an end to my grumbling, adding that we were vegetarians, for good measure!
But the ones in this garden have perfected it to an art.
My plants are doing really well, I think one morning, the peppers and tomatoes are coming along nicely. All the creatures that call my garden home obviously think so, too, because the next morning, I survey chewed up vegetables, left as evidence of a party.
I read somewhere that putting cayenne pepper around plants stops animals cold in their tracks because it gets in their paws and then in their eyes when they ‘wash’ their faces by rubbing their paws across their faces. I am horrified that anyone, even one who guards her harvest ferociously, would torture a squirrel like that.
I ask gardening buddies and neighbours for tips on how to deter them.
One suggests spraying vinegar around plants, animals don’t like the smell, apparently. I try that, and spray liberally on the Chinese lanterns on which I am battling a horrible bug infestation this year, as well. We use vinegar in salad dressings, doesn’t kill the plants, so should be okay, I reason. It does seem to work on the bugs, but the smell just seems to draw more squirrels and rabbits to the vegetables.
A friend in India gets in on the act. She writes to me about a wildlife program on squirrels she watched on television. Contrary to popular belief, they are exceedingly clever, she says. They are able to deduce and problem-solve, as birdfeeder owners will testify!
“I think you should take inspiration from old cartoons and comics – string along a pull rope with noisemakers and ‘flutterers’ tied to it at intervals, all along the flower and fruit bed, all the way to your hand where you are sitting rocking away in your rocking chair, on the lookout with your eagle eyes scanning, eager to jangle the string/rope and scare the critters away!”
I am happy to provide the humour, but persevere with my search for solutions. I move a few tomato and pepper plants to pots on the deck where I think I can keep a closer watch on them. The squirrels respond by camping out on the tree near the deck, leaping on to the pots with glee the moment my back is turned. They not only break off stems with green tomatoes on them and yet-to-reach full-size peppers, they take to chewing up my prized champa plants started from branches. The plants go from filling out with new growth to being reduced to stumps.
I am on the verge of being defeated by the beady-eyed little marauders.
When I read that sticking forks in soil around plants is a deterrent as it pokes them if they get too close, I go out and buy clear plastic forks in bulk from a dollar store and stick them in pots. It works to some extent. They do manage to work their work around in the gaps, but at least they are not digging out plants and discarding them for the fun of it.
But I can’t possibly booby trap the entire yard! Also, I have my son teasing me about how not only did I provide dressing (vinegar) for the salad, I have now made forks available for al fresco dining in my garden for the creatures.
Oh well, win some, lose some, I think, as I harvest a few tomatoes that the squirrels leave for me before frost gets them.