WALKING THE ROWS

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

Take the woodchuck I matched wits with for two years. If you don't know what a woodchuck is, it is what groundhogs are called some places including Maine.

Woodchucks and I go way back. When I bought this house 28 years ago they were living in the wood shed under the porch, used the drainage culvert to cross the road and, in general, thought they owned the place. I fenced my first gardens, until one built a home in the winter squash patch. It wasn't until we got a dog that they decided this was not prime real estate. It is amazing how canny animals are. Our most recent dog was nearing the end of her life three years ago and the woodchucks started moving back. They would taunt her, it seemed, coming closer and closer knowing that if they could coax her to get up and chase them they could beat her back to the hedgerow.

Two years ago the dog died and protecting the garden fell back on me. I had grown lax. I let the critter eat some lettuce. Then I put out some lettuce in a have-aheart trap. Are you kidding? Eat wilted lettuce in a trap when fresh is right there? I had lost the initiative. I then sprayed my favorite Mexican seasoning on the lettuce and beans, figuring it would just be a matter of time before he or she tried those. But it rained and I wasn't visiting the garden as regularly as I should. The woodchuck was getting fatter and finding more escape routes. I strung an electric fence around the garden at woodchuck-nose-height. By now the peas were being harvested. At one point my son was in the garden grabbing a snack when he found himself eye to eye with the woodchuck, who was feasting on something in the garden, looking for all the world as if it was his or her garden. When Josh chased it he saw how it got past the fence. It just lowered its head and ran.

If the fence had been there earlier the woodchuck would have decided the garden was not a nice place. Having determined that the garden was, in fact, one of the nicest places for a meal imaginable, he or she was willing to risk a little shock.

So I put up another strand of wire and I seasoned the plants again. The seasoning, by the way, is about a tablespoon of liquid detergent and a tablespoon or more, depending on how angry I am, of Tabasco in a watering can of water. Animals in Maine, at least, do not like highly spiced food. This works especially well if this is the first taste they get from your garden. Almost as well if it is the second. Past that and you may have more convincing to do.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print