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Bye-Bye Bambi: A Battle for Keeps!

© Barbara M. Martin

I used to think deer were warm and fuzzy, delightful and desirable wildlife, a lovely sight as they leaped across a meadow or peered through the woods NOT ANY MORE! The only deer welcome at my house these days are the ones we put out apples and a bucket of water for on a certain night in December. For a mere hint of the depth of emotion wayward deer can arouse in a devoted gardener, here is Jerry Huckabee's wry tale.

Last time I saw real live deer up close and personal and in my yard, I got mad. As in ready to do battle. Briefly, I considered getting a hunting license. Or at least a slingshot! Lucky thing I am not a violent person. I'm not much of a shot anyway -- and apparently neither is Ron Kreeger, given the looks of his "holey deer". (It's okay to look -- I promise! He's a retired veterinarian, after all!) Here's the full story from Northwest News by Oscar Roloff about how that deer got those holes! (No, I didn't have anything to do with it!)

But I didn't just get mad. Nosireee. In the end, I got even. Or at least achieved a standoff.

So what happened? The deer discovered my brand new garden and thought it was pretty tasty, that's what happened. They sampled it often and a lot. They ate most everything. Some stuff tasted yucky, so they uprooted it and then spit it out. Must have spit along with a toss of the head for good measure because I found uprooted plants flung yards away from their planting spots. And what the deer didn't eat or toss aside, they stepped on with their sharp little hooves.

Think deer might be picky eaters? Think again. Within weeks, my new garden was ... gone.

Nonetheless, here are a couple of interesting lists: The Virtual Garden's Garden Guru is bold enough to put out a list of Deer Proof Plants. I think I would have said something more akin to deter. It includes three plants my little dears ate that first winter: juniper, artemisia, and daffodil foliage and one they yanked up and flipped: iris. So much for that idea! Here is another list conservatively described as being plants hardly ever eaten by deer, from The Over-Hand Gardener. In all fairness, it pays to note that deer populations will eat different things, depending on what they have learned to like and how hungry they are. They were really hungry that year!

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