Dear Kid,

The Deer Wars are heating up. Dad is Unamused to wake up and find hoof prints in the garden and the tops nibbled off the beets. Since he’s tired of providing the deer with a multi-course buffet (try pronouncing it “boo-fay” just for fun), we decided to investigate ways to keep deer out of the garden.

When you ask my friend the Internet to give you ideas for “Deer-proofing Your Garden” you find lots and lots of suggestions. The most effective is “Grow rocks.” Deer don’t generally eat much ore.

Unfortunately, our plan is to grow more than rocks, so we had to go further.

The second step is to abstain from planting things deer like. After a quick inventory, we discovered that the only thing on our entire property that the deer don’t much care for is our driveway. Moving on.

The next idea is to plant things deer don’t like. Errr, we have several things on “Deer don’t like” list. And apparently, the deer really don’t like them—but on our property they just ignore the icky things and move on to the things they prefer.

Wash up. Several sites suggest putting shavings of Ivory Soap or Irish Spring Soap in the garden to keep deer away. No idea why these brands in particular. And not sure how I feel about a sudsy garden. I am pretty sure how Dad would feel about soap run off. Maybe washing will work. Not.

Or we could stink the deer off. “Rotten eggs and garlic seem to be two of the most effective deterrents” to deer. Oh, good. Just what we wanted. In a word, “No.”

“Frighten the deer away.” That sounds promising. Oh, wait. The best frighteners are coyote, wolves, dogs, and people. We’ve got three of the four and the deer keep coming. Sigh.

Another option is to build a fence. Of course the fence has to be at least 7 feet high because deer are pretty good jumpers and the fence has to be built out of some seriously sturdy stuff or the deer will just push right through.

As far as I can tell, all of these will be about as effective as putting up a sign that says “Deer: Go to the Neighbors.”

Daddy has now draped the beets with cheesecloth (it was an adventure purchasing cheesecloth, but that’s another story).

I’m guessing that the score between Dad and the deer is about even right now.

Did I mention Dad saw moles??

Garden vs Nature continues.

Love, Mom