LARGE CRITTER CONTROL

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Keep your garden and yard
safe from curious intruders.

"Suburban" While tailed Deer

Kindhearted suburbanites set out high-frequency soundmakers or sprinkle on proprietary deer-repellent concoctions from the pet store. Some collect human waste or gather lion and tiger droppings from zoos and scatter these around the gardens. In our experience, only three methods work: rotten eggs, a big dog with a loud bark and all his own teeth, and a pair of electromechanical devices that are effective against many garden interlopers.

Perhaps the easiest defense is to mix eggs in water and spray on your plants. The eggs will rot imperceptibly, producing an offensive sulphur-dioxide odor. Deer will be repelled by a spray too light for humans to sense. A ribbon of heavy spray surrounding the garden is said to work, but we find that you must spray (lightly) everything in the orchard or garden for full effect. We mix two or three eggs to a gallon of warm water, let it steep for a day, then apply it with a backpack insecticide sprayer set on medium-fine spray. Applications should be renewed weekly in the spring; later, apply only to succulent new growth and fruit every couple of weeks.

A male dog of any thick coated, naturally territorial breed that is trained to patrol your growing areas night and day in all weather will discourage most pests. We like German shepherds, but any large, athletic breed will do, except for golden retrievers, which have been bred to adore all God's creatures.

For a few hundred dollars you can buy a training collar and bury a radio signal generator and broadcast antenna wires to create an "invisible fence" that will establish a perimeter and contain the dog (see " Homestead Hound, Part II "). This is best for densely pop ulated areas.

Living in the distant and sparsely populated boondocks, I find that taking a young dog on frequent leashed walks around the gardens establishes his territory. When he matures, he will patrol it by instinct. Scattering the dog's collected droppings along the route strengthens in his mind the identification of his turf and will further encourage him to move his latrine area out of the yard and along the perimeter of his territory. Keep your dog tied or confined during hunting season, as he may get shot while trying to woof off a party of hunters. Ditto any free-ranging livestock.

Effective against deer, raccoons and black bears (who eat more vegetation than animal matter and adore sweet peas) is a battery-powered transistor radio set in the garden dusk to dawn and tuned to a raucous, all-night rock station. If close to house power, you can plug the radio into an auto-timer and augment the sound with blinking lights; strings of white outdoor Christmas minilights work well. You can also waterproof an electronic project box with electrician's tape and clear mastic and fit it with a blinking red or green LED (light-emitting diode) with an on/off switch and a dry-cell power supply. These are cheap, portable and easy to use. Change the location of radio and lights every few days.

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