Woke up to go weed, and the deer ravaged my garden. Half the tomatoes are chewed off at about knee high. The peppers cease to exist in many spots- like an odd alien abduction.
Got a garden full of former tomato plants, onions, and weeds.
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Hawes
Get Tunch on it.
I have a mental picture of him crouched over the carcass of a large deer.
jrg
I suggest this 32 oz bottle of Wolf Urine. I have no idea if it works or not, but the reviews are awesome.
srv
Lot of good your animal farm did.
S-Curve
I’m inexplicably pleased by the decision to tag this under “Assholes.” John Cole called Bambi an asshole! Call Breitbart!
Han's Solo
You’re growing weed? Dude, that’s ballsy.
Seriously though, deer suck. There isn’t much you can do about them. I’d say get a dog, but you have a dog and deer tend to kick the crap out of dogs. My 90 pound, muscle bound boxer had to get many, many stitches from one encounter with a deer.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Sorry to hear of the demise of your garden but at least it wasn’t at your hand. You probably would have had a much better morning if you had written that you “Woke up to go smoke some weed” and had just left it at that.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
I did a quick glance at that first sentence and thought you said “woke up to some weed” and thought “wow, he really has gone left”.
Dana Houle
After grass-fed beef, maybe my favorite meat is tomato-fed venison.
wasabi gasp
Because of crap like that, I gave up on a veggie garden until I can find the time to build a prison fence. My girlfriend is dedicated to her flower garden though and whips up batches of this stuff minus the milk. She say the milk makes her plants white.
shortstop
Since I’m currently enraged at urban squirrels for digging up part of my railing boxes of herbs and lettuce, I can only imagine how vein-popping a deer-hoovered garden must be. (But Hawes and S-Curve made me guffaw.)
shortstop
Also, too, I read Cole’s lead as “woke up to go wee.” Which may also have been true.
Snarkworth
It’s still June. Those munched tomatoes might come back and do OK, if you can prevent a recurrence.
Does Agway sell grizzlies?
PeakVT
That sucks. People pick the buds off my flowers by the sidewalk all the time (why don’t you wait until they bloom, morons?). But I’m not expecting to eat them so I’m not missing out on as much.
OT: A ghost city in China that looks like London. Weird stuff. Here are more ghost cities.
Poopyman
@ jrg:
That’s a lot to drink at one sitting.
jibeaux
One of my co-workers, who lives in a college town, has a neighborhood completely overrun with deer. Homeowners can give permission, if they like, to allow bow hunters onto their property — we’re talking like quarter acre property with swingsets on it here — to hunt the deer. It’s gotten that bad. They’re supposed to only hunt very, very, very early in the morning, but she said getting into her car one morning she saw a guy perched in the neighbor kid’s tree house, waiting for the deer. Anyway, if anyone wants to use that in a novel, feel free.
Dana Houle
And in solidarity: we had 80 mph winds last night, 300K people don’t have power, so there are worse affects, but I was bummed to wake up this morning to see our chard, kale and lettuce pushed down. At least the tomatoes, peppers, beans and herbs are OK.
Having a garden helps us better appreciate the scenes in novels and movies when–in the absence of crop insurance and ag subsidies–farmers would watch locusts or flood or drought wipe out their crops. We get bummed that the chard looks fragile, I can’t imagine losing our income or the bulk of what we expected to eat.
eemom
@comrade scott’s agenda
I thought exactly the same thing. Wake & bake, as an old college friend used to say.
Sorry about that, John Cole. I’m not a gardener but I know how much work you put into it — really sucks.
Cue deer hunting thread……
Or perhaps, Bambi Meets Godzilla.
Dana Houle
@jibeaux I have some venison in the freezer right now that my step-brother gave me. He shot last fall it in his backyard with his bow. A couple years ago, in his suburban neighborhood, he got 7 deer; iirc, he kept 4 of them, gave one to a friend for a gift, gave one to another friend as payment for work the guy did on my brother’s chimney, and he gave the remaining one to a food bank.
Last year the deer still ate everything in his garden.
Guster
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xL9xCWphV8s
ETA: That’s a Louis CK clip for Cole, not some random spam.
res ipsa loquitur
Fence?
Disgruntled Lurker
After grass-fed beef, maybe my favorite meat is tomato-fed venison.
Coffee, nose, keyboard, etc.
And yes, this kind of stuff definitely makes you realize what it took to pick up your family and move to some frontier with nothing but a wagon of provisions and some seeds.
I garden on an extra-large apartment patio about 20 feet off the ground. Deer are not a problem, but I routinely deal with mornings where some family of rodents have taken a single bite out of every single veggie.
SteveinSC
Hey, if you have a Tractor Supply, go spend $79 on a non-lethal electric wire. It is battery powered and ought to do the trick. There’s an even better solar powered one for about $100. I have a garden and deer and Raphiolepsis (India Hawthorne) so my battle is never ending. From the web, I have a very effective spray that works better than Deer Off and is dirt cheap. Egg whites, extract of Jalapeno, whole milk, a little dish soap and a little cooking oil. The deer will not eat protein or hot stuff and the other ingedients make sure it stays on in the rain. Wash off, of course, after picking the veggies.
Carnacki
You should have stood guard every night with your machete and done battle with the deer. Didn’t they teach you sword fighting in the Army?
General Stuck
President Baby Burper
Now we just need to get some of our butthurt progs in for a presidential hug, a lot of this crying would stop.
The Dangerman
I’ve heard Cayenne pepper works well.
shortstop
My grandfather was a farmer. My dad remembers standing in the farmhouse kitchen with him watching a major hailstorm take out the whole year’s wheat crop…with my grandpa calmly muttering, “There it goes.”
Glenn
You should see what zombies will do to your plants.
shortstop
WTF do they do that?!! It wouldn’t be so bad if those bastard squirrels ate all of a few veggies rather than one bite of each. The third baseman has actually chased them, screaming, “Get back here and finish that, motherfucker!” The neighbors love us.
JR
I can understand the feeling of loss.
Yesterday morning the hostas beside our front door were seriously pruned back. We live in the woods, surrounded by superior browse, and they’re stealing our ornamentals by the front door.
We have 3 dogs, and the neighbor’s dog visited all day yesterday because of the thunder. They all go barking at the deer, and the deer stand there and look at them… so the dogs walk away, looking back wondering what’s wrong with the world when the f’in deer won’t run from a howling pack.
If you could hear Boomer, the 70 lb pit bull, you would not know how the deer could just stand there and look, he whines this high-pitched barky howl that says “I’m wantin’ to eat you UP!” to me. I guess it says “Hi Howard” to the deer.
Our power was out last night too. I grilled and put potatoes out there with the pork on a little later – it was really nice, tho a little dim in the kitchen.
Origuy
I forget where I read it (maybe here), but it was claimed that the critters are after the water rather than the food when they do this. Leave a pan of water out for them, just change it once in a while so that you don’t breed mosquitoes.
Poopyman
@ Carnacki:
I dunno, was he in the cavalry? They use cutlasses, which are pretty much machetes.
kindness
John now sees the virtue in having a 6′ 4″x4″ wire fence. Keeps the dogs & the deer out.
Poopyman
@Origuy:
I dunno. That sounds like the standard raccoon MO, and I wouldn’t put it past those little bastards that they just do it for the damage.
Violet
I’m so sorry. That sucks. Stupid deer. Time for moar fence?
Walker
If you have the acreage to safely shoot them on the property, get a nuisance license (to kill them outside of season). They will learn and stay away.
wenchacha
A neighbor tells me the deer are out nibbling around 4AM. So far I have been sleeping at that time of day, but I am tempted to wake myself up to confront them at that hour. My tomatoes also were nibbled down.
The netting I spread around the tomato cages to deter them is missing; did my son move it while mowing? I need to get a Fort Knox/TSA sort of barrier up, and soon.
My biggest disappointment this spring was the total destruction/disappearance of my strawberry patch. I had that prolific bunch of plants for 3-4 years, and they vanished this winter. I don’t know if I should blame the cold or rodents or Republicans.
Pepper your plants, Cole, and mix up the vile eggy brew. Use it every day or two. Consider checking out Rambo movies for ideas on building a tiger trap, complete with bamboo stakes. You might snag a kid or two, but the deer might move elsewhere.
Don’t forget to hang a bloody deer carcass near the garden, as a warning to all other would-be interlopers.
AAA Bonds
JOHN YOU SHOULD NOT GO “WEED” WHEN YOU FIRST WAKE UP. Save that shit for evenings and weekends and don’t do it where the cops can see you
Citizen_X
Dude is just fucking with us now.
Dana Houle
@wenchacha he should also paint his body and dance around the hanging carcass. It’s been shown to deter burglars.
LGRooney
@Glenn
This. Damned comments are going to get me into trouble!
Athenae
I saw in this movie once that human hair clippings would deter them. Your local barber may be able to supply you on the off chance you don’t just cut your hair at home with a shank like a Real American Man.
I shake hot chili peppers into my herb garden pots to keep the squirrels out, but I’ve given up growing patio tomatoes. Little fuckers nom them just when they’re ripe, every time.
A.
catclub
From Thinkprogress: “A new study released by Nature Communications estimates that global warming could cause the temperature-related deaths of as many as 15,000 Europeans by 2070. The researchers estimate that deaths will be worst in southern Europe. ”
I work that out to 250 deaths per year in a population of over 300 million (? likely much more). That is extremely weak tea.
I just googled russian heat related deaths 2010 and found this:
“On July 19 alone, 71 people drowned in Russia while another 274 lost their lives in similar circumstances the week before. Many of these deaths were due to a tragic combination of swimming in unsupervised areas and alcohol consumption, the biggest factor in these types of tragedies.”
EIGRP
I’ve turned John’s post into a haiku because that’s how my brain originally started to parse it:
@Athenae – I’ve heard that too about human hair. My wife has put some of the kids’ hair around our gardens. No deer, but I didn’t notice any before the hair either.
Eric
Tlazolteotl
Oh, man, I feel for you.
I have had to replant beans already because of the slugs this year. I have put out some bait, now. Plus it has been so cold this spring that everything is struggling. Except the roses and peonies….but I was actually hoping for a better year than last year, which was also so cool I had no grapes and no squash because of the crappy weather. This year, not only have we had a record cold spring, but something (raccoons? neighborhood cats?) has been digging up one of the beds, wiping out half my turnips and spinach (mere sprouts!) in one night. :(
Poopyman
@EIGRP:
Me likey, possibly because it may describe my own experience in the near future.
OzoneR
Here in New York, it’s increasingly looking like the Democrats will have to screw one constituency to please another.
Weaker rent control for gay marriage, or no gay marriage for rent control.
OzoneR
Here in New York, it’s increasingly looking like the Democrats will have to screw one constituency to please another.
Weaker rent control for gay marriage, or no gay marriage for rent control.
Roger Moore
@jrg:
Yeah, those reviews are fucking awesome. I have a feeling I’m going to be bursting into inexplicable laughter for the rest of the day thinking about them.
Maura Cavaleri
I feel your pain. Deer stampeded my sugar baby corn last week and now they are going after my Japanese popping corn! I have tried everything but fencing. Fencing won’t work because of the acreage so I am tempted to try the Wolf urine. But we also have ten cats – won’t it freak them out??????/
Poopyman
… Just to add to my #45 post, I’ve already been harvesting yellow squash at a rate of about 2/day from plants 3+ feet high. They passed the tomatoes about a week ago, and they’re crowding out the peppers. Tomatoes are still green though. Never had deer problems in past years, but there will be a first time, sooner or later.
Denali
Actually, deer are alien monsters out to get us all. And, also, were not fences on your agenda?
Maude
They say you need a 7′ tall fence to keep deer out.
In parts of NJ, the deer win every time, no matter what.
vtr
There’s a cheap, commercially available fertilizer called Milorganite. As I understand it, it’s made from stuff (he said daintily) from the Milwaukee sewage treatment system. Deer despise its odor, and it fertilises the garden, lawn. trees and shrubberies. It smells a bit odd, but not strong.
Please don’t use hot pepper substances; it will blind squirrels and chipmunks.
Pongo
At least you are now surrounded by happy deer and I’m sure they are grateful to you. The wolf urine wasn’t terribly effective for deer in our area, but seemed to help with bunnies and other small animals.
Cris (without an H)
What’s this about a wedding?
p.a.
agreed. in w va. shouldn’t be difficult to find someone to do the deed for you (having bangbangs in the home when you are in one of your moods prolly being a bad idea). just request a share of the meat.
geg6
So sorry to hear that, Cole. I honestly don’t have a clue as to why we aren’t plagued by deer in our garden, but we are not. Instead, they drink up the entire koi pond (only a slight exaggeration).
Our only garden losses so far this year have been the heirloom tomatoes and cabbages that didn’t like a cold night. Couldn’t save any of the heirlooms, but about 2/3 of the cabbages survived. Beets, beans, lettuce, regular tomatoes, onions, carrots, cukes, peppers, herbs, garlic, and various squashes are all going gangbusters. And our raspberry and blackberry bushes are about to begin bursting into full harvest. The peach, apple, and pear trees look better than they did last year (a bad crop in 2010). And we even have grapes on the vines (wine making will also take up a lot of time in the fall, I see). We’ll be canning and bottling for weeks. Probably almost until Christmas, if it all comes in as it seems it might.
Next time you’re in the ‘Burgh vicinity, let me know and I can provide you with a care package from our gardens.
Kristine
In the early 60s, my folks had a farm in upstate NY. The pheasants used to walk along the rows between the tomatoes and peck a single hole in each. Since my folks sold tomatoes to weekend campers, etc, that didn’t go over well. I was 4-5 at the time, and don’t recall ever having pheasant for dinner. Unless it tasted like chicken.
Roger Moore
@vtr:
I don’t think that argument is going to hold much weight with gardeners. If anything, they’re likely to see it as a strong point in favor of hot peppers. There are few pests that gardeners hate more than fluffy tailed tree rats.
General Stuck
After years of permanent war with Deeristan, I finally threw in the towel, surrendered, cut and ran, and signed a declaration of you won with the local Muley tribes.
I think they are republican Deer, cause the greedy fuckers ate everything and their un managed risk turned to collapsing the market and now must find dinner all on their own.
One of the last straws, was when I wedged some short sticks along the border of my bean plants up against the apt building. So one morn I woke up to tiny deer traks that slipped under the barrier and laid waste to the fruits of my labor. They have no shame sending their young into battle like that.
Roger Moore
@General Stuck:
And you call yourself a General! A real general never cuts and runs; he calls for a tactical disengagement followed by a redeployment to another theater. And none of his subordinates is ever allowed to call it anything different without facing Court Martial for insubordination.
General Stuck
Obviously, not a very good one.
RossInDetroit
Deer are pests. They climb up on my father’s porch and eat the decorative ‘Indian’ corn wreath he puts on the front door in the fall. That’s ballsy.
He got accidental revenge last week, but it will cost Allstate a front clip on his Toyota.
LGRooney
The deer probably wanted to be sure their bellies were full before the storms came and destroyed all the gardens.
Scout211
We live on 5 acres. My garden is surrounded by a 7 foot deer and rabbit fence. We did it ourselves and it wasn’t that expensive. We purchased the posts and the wire fencing at Lowe’s.
We have deer, rabbits, wild turkeys and other assorted voles that would feast on the veggies without the fencing.
stuckinred
RossInDetroit
Deer are big fucking rats.
shortstop
Sorry to your dad, but that is hilarious.
mr. whipple
Don’t mess with half measures. High fence and gun.
Tuttle
In two of the last four years in my yard deer have dug up and destroyed annoyingly placed yellow-jacket hives. They can have a few tomatoes.
Gravenstone
Human hair will deter deer. When I bought my house (2 acres, rural area), the homeowner had little balls of hair wrapped in panty hose hanging from all the evergreens. I elected not to replenish them when they finally weathered away after a couple years. The deer then decided that cedar makes damn tasty foraging. But you know, I’m okay with that, because I hate having to mow around the fucking things.
jaxtra
i use fishing line at 3 and 5 feet off the ground. they can’t see it, but sure can feel it. scared them away but good. i also tie some ribbon on it to make it visible to humans.
tominwv
Deer and rabbit repellent from Southern States works for us.
terry
I pee around my garden. The deer know I’m not to be fucked with.
d. john
@19,
Yeah, and I like how he used the word n****r right there at the end. The man is comic gold.
Stay classy Louis!
/snark
(Cries of, he’s a only a comedian and therefore unaccountable for saying vile shit will be summarily laughed down and dismissed out of hand. N****r is not unfunny and unacceptable – unless you are racist )
Kristine
Anyone know if those reflector eyes work at all (largish Eye-of-Horus discs with foil surface)? Looks like I can either hang them from wire or nail them to a tree.
In the meantime, I’ve been using this stuff called Greenscreen. I think it works. A friend’s sister used it to keep the deer from munching her flowers. I’ve spread the powder, and still have hosta, impatiens and lilies in the front yard. I’ve used the little bags, but unless they’re secured, squirrels make off with them. They drop them, though. The stuff must not taste good.
d. john
As far as keeping deer out of a yard, have you considered getting a dog?. esp a yappy one?
(I don’t even care to have dogs as pets personally, too much attention required for my needs – but they can be useful pets to have around and I’d certainly consider one if I lived on Lummi Island for example – anywhere overrun with deer – seems fairly humane and foolproof to scare them off that way – if u don’t mind that the dog is outside mostly)
Cheers
ooops:
Hans Solo x2
Constance
Luckily I don’t have deer because over-development has driven out the deer and the meadowlarks. The burst of the housing bubble has caused my neighborhood to slide downhill (it was already considered low class because the houses are really old, pre-starter mansion era and on a dirt road which is fine by me). I do have weeds that are literally three and four feet high because we had a wet winter and a very late, wet spring. I’m in a tiny house on 1.3 acres surrounded by weeds and barely scratched out a small area to plant tomatoes and herbs and a few sunflowers so I can participate in the bee count on July 16. Did I mention that I’m old and have a low thyroid?
The weeds will be dried up and dangerous in two weeks if I leave them so have hired a guy with a weed-eater to come in and save the property but I worry that we will harm quail and bunny nests in the process. The cats already brought me one baby bunny this year. Can’t complain too much–I live in one of the most beautiful areas in the west of the US of A.
Sorry about your deer problem, John. That would make me crazier than I am already. My dog is old, blind, deaf and no help at all keeping anything off the property or even telling me some one/thing is visiting.
trollhattan
Year’s least-surprising headline.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/transocean-blames-bp-for-2010-oil-spill/2011/06/22/AGsfqefH_story.html?hpid=z4
Dunno if the petroleum industry works like others, but normally the lead or general is responsible for the subs and their screwups. BP can point all the fingers they have available, but Macondo was their project.
jibeaux
@74 Louis CK’s riff on “The N Word” and “The C Word” is, IMO, one of the funniest and most insightful bits on “bad” words since Carlin.
Jules
Your pain John, I feel it.
Forgot to check the tomatoes in the am and by the time I check at 4pm the tomato worms had done their worst.
Bastards.
I have given up.
Dee Loralei
I have a friend who puts little glass green and red Christmas ornaments on all her tomato plants a couple green and a couple red on each plant as it can hold them. She uses the really small balls and the ones that are about the size of a full grown tomato. She says that teaches the squirrels etc that the fruits growing on her plants might look like the tomatoes they love, but they wont like them. She says she always gets a few broken ones where they tried to eat them and then by the time her plants set actual fruit, the rodents have given up on her garden. I don’t know if this actually works, but her early summer garden looks utterly charming, like a wee fairy garden party. Oh and she always hits the after Christmas sales to get a bunch of them for the coming growing season.
Mike S
SteveinSC – I second the electric fence idea. It works very well for me here in eastern Pennsylvania. I prefer the nylon ribbon with embedded strands of wire though because it is easier to see. I also recommend putting a little peanut butter every fifteen feet or so on the wire as bait to lure the deer into touching it with skin rather than fur. It may seem cruel but it is less fatal than a bow and arrow. Once they learn to avoid your yard the bait will rarely if ever be needed again. Our electric fence has actually been turned off for the last 2 years but the deer still go around our yard but eat our neighbors tomatoes!
tamied
Constance at 77 – You should get some goats.
Tsulagi
Well, there’s a way to solve that and have deerburgers for the BBQ. Win/win.
OzoneR
Maybe Jane Hamsher will put together a good Web ad convincing people they’re not to blame.
mr. whipple
They’ll be back. We live in the middle of suburbia, USA and there’s so many deer here they are like rats, only tamer. They’ll walk down the middle of city streets at high noon.
They adapt very well to ‘development’ and in fact feed better because they have no predators and an unlimited food supply.
lacp
Well, this is depressing, especially the percentage of folks who think that cutting taxes and deregulating will help the economy recover.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-22/americans-worse-now-than-when-obama-inaugurated-by-44-34-margin-in-poll.html
d. john
@79,
I won’t argue with you on the merits of this observation, other than to say it simply it says more than you intended, I think.
I’m afraid that continuing this line of conversation would cause the thread would turn into something like this.
https://balloon-juice.com/2011/06/16/ca-36-ad-hahn-investigating-hueys-connection-to-creator-of-most-comically-racist-campaign-ad-in-universe/#comments
=)
Cheers.
Further replies on this topic will be ignored by me due to what I mentioned above. that is all.
Joel
What you need is a pet bear.
quannlace
Oh, John, that had to be a heart-breaker.
What Snarkworth said. Tomato plants are incredibly forgiving. Leave them in, they’ll come back.
Unfortunately, it seems all the deer repellant/remedies really don’t work. The only sure thing is the high fence. But then the deer will probably figure out how to work the latch.
Quicksand
Try a Scarecrow motion sensitive sprinkler.
It has done WONDERS for my yard. Raccoons were pulling up the sod looking for grubs and such. This device has had basically a 100% success rate in keeping them away, and raccoons aren’t easy to deter.
Fantastic.
NoPublic
We kill off the predators and pave over the habitats and then get upset with the critters for doing what they do naturally. That’s kinda sad.
kindness
NoPublic@92
Maybe Jon needs to reintroduce wolves. I’m sure that would go over swimmingly with his neighbors.
jibeaux
@88 Dude, I’m not reading 166 comments of B-J navelgazery to get whatever sense it is you’re talking about as a reason to ignore me, so whatevs. I’m pretty comfortable with not being racist and still liking humor I like, and I’m sure Louis CK is too.
Nellcote
My sympathies on your deer problem. I use this formulation:
1 qt. water, 2 eggs, 1 tbsp. tobasco. Blenderize and strain through a fine mesh strainer.
sprayed weekly. It’s worked for years.
Delia
The guy who who fixed my fence last summer told me he’d been working with some people out in the country around here who’d had deer jump an 8 foot fence. Maybe you need razor wire along the top.
I heard this story last week on NPR about how deer are destroying biodiversity in the forests. Apparently they used to be almost extinct in Maryland and Virginia, but state fish and game departments imported more so there’d be some to hunt. And, of course, all the farmers and ranchers want the predators killed off. So there’s that.
Anne Laurie
Giving the little varmints a water source has worked nicely for me. Doesn’t have to be fancy — I use plastic pot saucers, the 12″-14″ diameter kind, on the ground next to my planters where I can refill them when I water.
John, sorry to hear about your loss… here’s hoping at least some of the tomatoes recover (it’s early enough in the season).
HeartlandLiberal
Deer are leaving me alone for moment, but I broke my fibula clean thru above ankle 19 days ago, and the weeds have gone wild and are taking over while I lie here on my back with my leg in a cast and kept elevated. I can’t even get out yet and crawl on my knees to try and pull them out. The only thing that has kept the varmits from my strawberries is the poultry wire frame cage I build over them.
My son has come by and sprayed my fruit trees, and he sprayed a concoction of eggs/garlic/peppers on my lilies, so at least the deer have not done their usual browsing snack of the lily buds just as they get ready to explode into bloom, as if I had planted a dessert buffet just for them.
He has harvested a bunch of greens, and two bags of Romaine lettuce. Had great salad with Romaine, peas, carrots, a cucumber fresh from the garden, and shrimp for lunch.
Timothy Trollenschlongen (formerly Tim, Interrupted)
John, wow, sorry to hear about the deer-rape of your garden. Heartbreaking.
Um…I don’t understand why you don’t have a high mesh fence around your garden, given all the space you’ve given it and all the work you put into it.
Enlighten me?
mattski
@jrg (2). I thought you meant for cole to drink…
Libby's Person
Deer fence design reference: The peanut butter fence might work for you, John. I do like the mental image of Bambi touching his nose to the peanut butter and getting a surprise…