I Hate Deer

I now hate deer. A deer ate the leaves off one of my three-year-old apple trees and severely damaged another one. Son of a bitch! Bambi sucks!

You may think that’s harsh. After all, deer are cute animals with perky ears, large wet noses, and bobbing white tails, right? When you see them grazing in a wild flower-speckled meadow you can almost hear John Denver singing in the background as they raise their furry little heads, flick their ears, gaze around, and then bend down delicately nibble the vegetation. Aww, aren’t they precious? Daddy, can I have one?

Well that’s bullshit. When you live in the country it doesn’t take long to realize that deer are voracious, vicious, destructive, and over-populated pests. They eat your shrubbery, fruit trees and vegetables, and every now and then one jumps through your front windshield as you are driving down the road. The chapter on nuisance animals in the Master Gardener Handbook lists deer are right up there with armadillos, gophers, mice, moles, raccoons, and rats.

Deer are not cute. The more you’re around them the more you realize that they have sharp pointed faces and look like large rats (which seems altogether appropriate considering what pests they are).

PETA-inspired animal lovers, eco-terrorists, tree huggers and metrosexuals will protest that people are invading deer environment and crowding the deer. That’s not really true either. Scientists say that there are more white-tailed deer in this country now than there were when Europeans came to the New World. There are hoards of them, and I think most of them live in North Georgia. Hardly a day goes by that I do not see deer as I drive around.

There are so many white-tailed deer in the United States that they are in constant danger of over-grazing their food supply and starving to death. Deer hunting is more than a sport; it is a necessity if the deer population is to survive.

You see, deer are not creatures of the deep woods. They live on the margins of forests near cleared areas, pastures, fields and meadows. While they will eat anything including twigs and bark, they prefer grass and succulent leaves from low-lying shrubs. Grass and shrubs grow only in open areas where sunlight can penetrate to the ground. Modern development has created the conditions for a deer population explosion. The truth is that deer are invading our space and crowding us out and not the other way around.

I suppose it was inevitable that my apple trees would be attacked. Everyone around here told me it would happen, but I got lulled into a false sense of security by the fact that it had not happened until now. Meredith and I sprayed deer repellant and spread our used cat litter around the apple trees. We hung chimes and fluttering ribbons around the trees. We even hung silver garland from Christmas around the trees. My little apple orchard looked like a campsite that had been abandoned by a bunch of gay gypsies and smelled like the ass end of a cat, but that was not enough to deter a deer.

What really pisses me off is that the deer attacked the tree in the middle of the day. Deer typically browse at dawn and dusk and lay low during the day. Meredith pulled weeds from around the apple trees just that morning. The brazenness of a midday deer attack is the deer equivalent of the one finger salute.

Well, I’m going to take this laying down. As soon as I finish this post I’m heading to Tractor Supply to buy the material to make an electric fence. Not just any electric fence, mind you. I intend to get a solar powered electric fence charger with a capacitor that will rival Old Sparky when it discharges. I want one so powerful that seismographs in Peru will register a 6.8 on the Richter scale if a deer touches the fence. I want one with so much current that it will cause mutations. I want to see deer jerky hanging from the fence.

If you think I am being vengeful, vindictive and excessive, then consider that it takes several years for apple trees to begin bearing a decent amount of fruit. Now I have to replace the tree that the deer ate and start over again.

Let me digress for a moment. Ancient Rome fought two wars with Carthage. After Rome won the first one, it signed a treaty with Carthage. The Carthaginians promised never to start another war with Rome. Years later, Carthage attacked Rome again. After Rome won the second war, it leveled the city of Carthage to the ground and salted the earth it stood on so nothing would ever grow there again. You know what? Rome never had a problem with Carthage again. That’s called the Carthaginian Solution.

I believe there are times when the Carthaginian Solution is required, and this is one of them. Mr. Deer should have read his history and thought of that before he started messing around with my apple trees.