A Distressing Garden Discovery

Those of you who follow this blog know that I have a big garden. You also know that I have a problem with garden pests of the four legged variety: moles, rabbits, ground hogs and deer. Of these, I would have to say that deer have been my biggest headache.

Here’s an interesting fact. It is estimated that in 1900 there were only 500,000 white tail deer in the entire U.S. Now the estimates range as high as 30 million. The State of Georgia believes that 1.2 million of them live in Georgia. I’m beginning to think that many of them use my garden as a buffet stopping point when they visit Blue Ridge.

I am convinced that deer were put on earth to be the scourge of rural gardeners. Not only are they numerous, but they tend to operate at times when humans don’t—dusk, dawn and at night. They very wary, have a good sense of smell and acute hearing. They eat almost anything. In the winter they will even eat the bark and tender twigs off fruit trees (which, obviously, is not good for said trees and for friendly relations with the gardener who is trying to grow them). Finally, they have the advantage of being cute which means that most women and many men look at you like you’re Jeffrey Dahmer if you even contemplate killing one. It’s that damn Bambi propaganda. Rural gardeners know them for what they really are: giant, voracious rats.

My second year here I put up a six foot high electric fence with a solar powered charger around my garden to protect it from predatory deer. (Predatory deer. That’s a redundant phrase. If you’re a deer, you’re predatory.)

The fence proved ineffective so this Christmas my oldest son gave me a fence charger which is good for 50 miles of fence wire. Since I only have about a half mile of fence wire around my garden I figured that was more than enough current to keep deer out of my garden. I tested it recently, and it gives off 7,000 volts. That’s enough current to induce sterility in small animals that pass too closely to it. Hell, that’s enough current to cause chromosome damage in adult males. If they installed this fence at the Mexican border it would solve illegal immigration. Foolishly, I believed that once I had that baby installed my deer problems were over.

My son also gave me a trail camera for Christmas. He and I mounted it to one of the garden fence posts facing into the garden. I was so confident I had the deer problem solved with my version of Old Sparky that I had not checked it since it was installed. Well, my son visited me this weekend, and just for the hell of it we pulled the chip out of camera to see what photos it had taken in the last three months. He popped the chip into his computer and began scrolling the through the pictures. The first two were my ugly mug turning the camera on. The third photo, taken six hours after I installed the camera, showed a deer strolling through my garden. Son of a bitch!

The camera revealed that my garden is the deer equivalent of a turnpike rest stop for deer passing through my property. I must have taken 250 photographs of deer in my garden. I have pictures of deer nibbling in the garden while Meredith and I are eating dinner. I have pictures of deer doing the tango. I have pictures of deer treating the trail camera like one of those four-for-a-dollar photo booths at the mall. I have pictures of deer laying in beach chairs under gaudy beach umbrellas sipping pina coladas. Maybe I’m exaggerating a little. Maybe the beach umbrellas were not that gaudy.

The point is that my high voltage, ultimate defense line, fry ‘em on the wire fence deterred exactly zero deer from getting in my garden. Needless to say this did not make me a happy camper. But I am not deterred. I refuse to be defeated by a four legged, rat-faced creature that is miles behind me on the evolutionary tree. I will deer-proof my garden come hell or high water.

So I did a little internet research. It turns out that a six foot fence is nothing for a deer. They can easily clear an eight foot fence and have been known on occasion to clear a ten foot fence. It is clear that I am going to have to build a 10 foot high fence around my garden. It may not keep out 100 percent of the deer but I can make sure it will take a deer Jesse Owens to get in. Unfortunately I cannot promise to make Mexico (or the deer for that matter) pay for it.

I am bound and determined to make my garden harder to get into than Area 51. When I’m finished it will feel like I’m gardening in a supermax prison.

The depressing thought is that once I get a handle on the deer problem I just know that some other critter or creature is going to rise up to attack my garden and torment me. Whoever said that gardening was a peaceful and tranquil hobby obviously never gardened in North Georgia.

Storytellers, Exotic Dancers and Spring Break

As I told you in my last post, I am taking a freshman-level political science class at the Blue Ridge campus of the University of North Georgia. The “campus” is actually a large rented office space with a couple of nice classrooms but UNG hopes to expand in the future. It’s the only state college within reasonable driving distance.

UNG offered six freshman- and sophomore-level courses in Blue Ridge this spring semester: Algebra, Psychology, Public Speaking, English and two political science courses, American Government and Global Issues. Most of these courses hold no interest to me. There’s no way I’m taking an algebra course. I figure I got this far in life knowing what little math I do know. Besides, I crashed and burned on algebra in high school when I couldn’t imagine imaginary numbers. As for psychology, I’m afraid I’ll discover that I have a committable mental condition. I’m pretty sure I don’t need a freshman-level English composition course. As a trial lawyer I feel I already have some proficiency at public speaking. Furthermore, I have no problem at all blurting out whatever is on my mind in public.

I wanted to take the global issues course since it deals with international relations but it conflicted with some other things on my schedule so that left the freshman level American Government course. I’m now halfway through it. In fact, I just finished my midterm (crushed it!), and I am on spring break. I was thinking of going to Panama City over the break with a load of beer to party hard with a bunch of drunken, hot, sweaty, bikini-clad college women but wisely decided not to. I can get the beer. It’s the other part of the equation I’m lacking. I’m also afraid that if I laid on a beach in a bathing suit I’d be mistaken for a washed up beluga whale and be the subject of a National Geographic aquatic rescue special.

My hope is that UNG will start offering courses in subjects like history, archeology, anthropology and some of the earth sciences like geology and meteorology at Blue Ridge. So when I heard that the director of UNG’s Appalachian Studies program was going to be at the Blue Ridge campus to talk about the program I eagerly attended in hopes I could convince her to offer one of the Appalachian history courses here. I have been interested in Appalachia and its history ever since I did a lot of hiking in the Great Smoky Mountains, and I believe that others in the area would be interested in learning about Appalachian history.

But after hearing her it I’m afraid that parts of the Appalachian studies program are a little too artsy-fartsy for my taste. One of the courses in the program is entitled “Appalachian Storytelling and Traditional Literature,” and if I understood the director correctly, she has a degree is in storytelling, Until that moment, I did not know you could take a course in storytelling much less get a degree in it. Maybe the old joke about getting a college degree in basket weaving is not so much of a joke.

Look, I appreciate a good storyteller as much as the next guy which is probably not saying a lot. I’m pretty sure of you took a poll of guys they would tell you that listening to a storyteller is not on their list of favorite things to do. If they tell you otherwise the odds are that they’re trying to impress a woman majoring in one of the arts, or they are a little light in the jeans. How many times have you seen a bunch of men sitting around drinking beer, eating chicken wings and listening to folk tales? Being entertained by bards and minstrels went out with Robin Hood and his Merry Men.

But regardless of whether you like to listen to storytellers or not, I have a problem with storytelling being a college course much less a field of academic study. It’s no wonder that so many of our college graduates cannot find a job if they have degrees in fields like storytelling. I doubt there is much demand for the degree in the job market. I’ll bet that companies like IBM, Walmart and General Electric don’t have a pressing demand for storytellers. In fact, I’m hard pressed to think of any significant job in the American economy where a degree in storytelling would be an asset.

Storytelling is not even listed on the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupation Outlook website as an occupation. That that tells you something considering that it lists adobe layers, bassoonists, bean roasters, beer coil cleaners, bird trappers, cheese weighers, goat herders, go-go dancers, net repairers, tenors, vaudeville actors, wind tunnel technicians, zookeepers and exotic dancers as occupations. Of these occupations, exotic dancing is the only one that I know far too much about.

The absence of any need for storytellers in real life probably explains why the director of the program works for a university.

Naturally, I got to wondering what a want ad for a storyteller would look like. Here’s what I came up with:

Storyteller wanted. Must have three years’ experience telling stories, tall tales, fairy tales and assorted invented narratives. Must have your own stories; stories will not be provided. Required that you own a clown suit with floppy feet and a big red nose and be good around children. Balloon animal tying skills desired.

Now, a lot of people I know—me included—probably could get a degree in bullshitting but I think that’s a different thing than storytelling…or maybe not.

Fortunately for me, the Appalachian Studies program offers three legitimate courses in Appalachian history which look interesting but I got the impression it is run by a dick professor who doesn’t like old guys auditing his course. He’s probably afraid that we might know more than him. I don’t know that for a fact but it makes me feel good to lash out blindly every now and then. It probably doesn’t matter since I doubt they will offer the courses in Blue Ridge anyway. Professor Dick is probably too self-impressed to drive up from Dahlonega to teach here in Blue Ridge anyway. (Damn! I did it again.)

If there’s a point to this post, it’s this: If you’re are planning on moving to the country when you retire and have thought about taking some college courses just for the heck of it, you better check out the educational opportunities where you’re going. There are not a lot of college choices in most rural areas, and you may be disappointed.

My Second College Career Career.

My new college career is going well at the Blue Ridge branch campus of the University of North Georgia (UNG), home of the most fearsome of college mascots: Nigel the Nighthawk. I hate to say this but as college mascots go, Nigel is pretty lame. You can start with the name “Nigel.” It sounds like it belongs to a slightly effeminate, upper crust Englishman with a lisp and a Sherlock Holmes hat. Not exactly the type of mascot to strike fear in manly or even womanly hearts.

According to Wikipedia, nighthawks are medium-sized, plain-looking, nocturnal birds with long wings, short legs and very short bills who usually feed on insects and nest on the ground. They belong to the family of birds known as nightjars. Nightjars are sometimes referred to as goatsuckers. Other teams have rams, tigers, lions, alligators and wildcats as mascots. UNG has an insect-eating bird often known as a goatsucker. I wonder whether anyone consulted the biology department before deciding that a nighthawk would be a good mascot.

As for the mascot itself, it is primarily blue with gold trim (the school colors) with a large head and flappy-looking wings hanging from its arms. If anything it reminds me of failed comic book superhero. It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a … just what the hell is that? The more I think about it, the more I think that Nigel the Nighthawk is Foghorn Leghorn in drag.

Happily, Nigel is not the worst college mascot of all time. There are far more ridiculous ones. Check out this web page. 

George Mason College’s mascot is called Gunston, and it looks like a green Oscar the Grouch wearing a pirate hat. The University of Calfornia at Santa Cruz has Sammy the Banana Slug as a mascot. Concordia College has a corn cob called Cobber while Delta State has Mr. Okra. What’s next—Terry the fighting Turnip, Andy the angry Acorn Squash and Peter the pugnacious Parsnip?

The mascot of the University of the North Carolina School of Arts is a pickle with no name. It is simply called the Fighting Pickle. Its colors are Bahama blue, séance and apple green. I can take a stab at Bahama blue and apple green but I couldn’t identify séance if you water boarded me. I suppose having a fighting pickle as a mascot is okay for a school of arts. It’s probably not much of a surprise that the UNC School of Arts has no NCAA sanctioned sports teams. I think they are hoping that interpretive dance and caricature sketching become popular with the sporting crowd someday.

At least those mascots have cuteness going for them. They are not likely to give little kids nightmares and psychologically scar them for life. The same cannot be said for the mascot of Providence College. It is a friar, i.e, a monk. The mascot wears white robes with a monk’s hood, and its facial expression can only be described as a cross between a rictus grin and a deranged look of agony. It looks more like an Islamic terrorist than a monk. That’s not a good thing for a Catholic school. If I saw Providence’s mascot coming at me through the woods I’d definitely shoot first and ask questions later.

Where was I? Oh, I was telling you about my fledgling second college career at UNG. As I told you in prior posts, I am auditing a freshman level introduction to political science course. Last week the professor had to miss a class so he could interview with his department for a full professorship. Rather than cancel the class he asked me to use the time to speak to the students about my experiences as an attorney defending civil rights cases. Of course I said yes. I never miss a chance to talk about me.

I’d like to tell you that the class went well but I don’t know if it did or not. All the students except me and another old guy are either true freshman or AP students who are still seniors in high school. I have shirts older than them. It’s not too much of a stretch to say that the only things I have in common with a 17 year old is the we’re both part of the human race and live in North Georgia. Maybe it’s not that bad but the difference between their life experiences and perspectives and mine is an almost unbridgeable gulf.

It’s obvious they were not as impressed with me as I am but then that might be impossible. I think it’s fair to say that they were not really interested in hearing about civil rights cases that involved basic Constitutional protections in action. I got a little rise out of them when I talked about police K-9 cases. I guess that proves it’s always good to throw an animal act into your show.

I wasn’t offended. My attitude is the hell with them. If they can’t recognize the good stuff when they hear it that’s their problem. As for me, I’ve sucked up to the professor and scored big bonus points which just goes to show you you should always watch out for old dogs with old tricks.