A daily experience for many of us in the Hudson Valley is the appearance of deer...everywhere. Not just at a viewing distance grazing among the trees but right under our noses, in our gardens, walking on our driveways and patios and even, so I've heard from a neighbor, walking up the front steps of the house to snack on geraniums. I've heard of wayward deer wandering into stores, deer giving birth in a small grove of tall grasses right on the property (happened to me) and one need not travel far to find plenty of deer carcasses all along the major and minor roadways. Deer are eating away at everything they can, especially now with the ground under a snow cover for several weeks.
The deer situation is difficult for homeowners. Both beautiful and destructive, they have pitted their many ardent fans against fuming horticulturists. Some want them protected. Many others want them culled, i.e., shot and killed. I don't try to grow things that deer are attracted to and invest hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, trying to keep them away from the thing they've been instinctively programmed to seek out (well not anymore, that is). This means giving up on the kind of natural landscape we'd like to have and sticking to a few basic plants that they apparently detest. On the other hand, most of our neighbors have taken a warfare-like approach in dealing with deer. With all of 8 and 10 foot fences that have gone up around us, our once beautiful outdoor area feels more like a jail yard. The unique, if not extraordinary views that are a part of the natural landscape here are blemished by a patchwork of fences intersecting and framing off the land as if it were a patchwork of animal cages. All this – and the deer continue to eat their way through suburbia as if they had no other choice. (Oh wait! They don’t!)
I know the deer are a destructive force and their over-population is a complex environmental issue that needs resolution before our few remaining forests are depleted. The co-sharing arrangement between human and deer habitats is not working -- that is plainly obvious. But, since I don't intend to begin the population reduction methods myself by slinging a shotgun out the bathroom window, I figure I have to accept the consequences of habitat destruction, i.e., the land and its supporting eco-system that once kept the deer population to a suitable concentration are gone. In their place is our home and thousands more like it. The predators are gone too and every time someone in the community spots a coyote, a witch hunt ensues to kill the beast before our children are dragged away by the neck.
The rear of our house faces up to the Taxter Ridge, a preserved area (thanks to the Town of Greenburgh and Westchester Land Trust) of some 200 acres that provides a most needed green canopy in otherwise congested Southern Westchester. A unique geological feature of the Ridge are tall granite croppings that border the developments that were built right under their flat peaks. It reminds us what created the Hudson Valley and stands today as it probably stood hundreds of years ago when these lands were home to Native Americans and visited by European explorers. Yet, despite the opportunity to live amongst so unique a landscape, its residents see no harm in marring it with chain-link fencing and invasive plants (bamboo anyone?). All of these efforts are designed to thwart the deer, who gobble the Impatiens with gusto and trample the well-tended lawn.
The outcome of these costly investments in deer deterrence (an entire industry has spawned around this) travel the full length of the human-beast connection. Both tragic and comedic, the drama seems to never reach conclusion (or resolution). The comedy would be the neighbor who has had his entire property wrapped in plastic netting. This is a fairly new invention that is marketed as "invisible at a distance and yet effective” because the deer simply can't eat through the plastic netting. Professional installers came to render the neighbor’s house deer-proof one day and left behind a house that looks as if it has been caught in one of those giant fishing nets dragged along by trawlers. I imagine our poor neighbors like captured marine animals, safe from their plant eating enemies but unable to move about the property. In time, swaths of the "invisble" netting in time began to droop and loosen, creating an awful eyesore only a notch better than the deer mangled trees they were meant to protect. There was also the sad sight of small birds trapped in the netting, not to mention the chipmunks we occasionally rescued through pruning shear extraction.
Another neighbor sprays the summer annuals over and over and over again with gallons of products designed to "odor" away the deer. From May to November, he has badger urine concentrate (a unique line of business, for sure) sprayed over every tightly rowed line of Impatiens, Marigold and the like. The poor fellow is out every morning, urine pumper in hand, reminding us that beauty is in the eye of the beholder (and certainly not the nose). While not everyone can get into a daily urine pumping routine, I did notice that this neighbor was the only one to achieve that highest of goals in the gardening world, that pinnacle of the Home Depot Gardening Club challenge course – COLOR! The rest of us were stuck with drab grays, brown and greens while his containers and borders looked like recurring patterns of Crayola boxes. However, I did find out that some deer – and whether they are nasty, stupid or just plain indifferent to fear I’ll never know – will put aside their distaste for badger urine long enough to eat through an entire row of salmon-pink Impatiens right down to the roots and even pull them clear out of the ground.
Worst of all are the fences. Why, you say? Fences seem like a logical and passive animal control system is what you're thinking, right? I suppose they would be if they were constructed with some knowledge of deer agility. Here's the thing: deer can jump really, really high. And when under stress, I've noticed, deer jump even higher. So, if you're going to put up a costly, rod iron fence that is designed to give your house the appearance of a medieval fortress, please first consult with someone who has knowledge of deer behavior. If you had, Mr. Neighbor, you might not have spent thousands on a fence designed to impale deer intent on crossing over your fence for one reason or another. Right now the reason is that you've got a two-acre smorgasbord of deer food sitting in there – a virtual Viennese Table of deer desserts – and hundreds of hungry deer sitting right outside the gate. The deer have to be culled one way or the other but I don't suggest that we painfully impale them one at a time on the spear-headed prongs of your gothic fence as happened to me one recent morning, a sight I don't recommend for everyone.
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