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| Tricks to make backyard bothers among the ‘deerly’ departed |
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| Increasing deer populations have become a major headache in many parts of the country. Even urban residents are learning that deer are much cuter in someone else’s yard than in their own.
Folks need not suffer alone, though. An entire body of folklore has evolved around methods for discouraging deer. Most of these suggestions have one thing in common: They work great if there aren’t any deer around.
We could take the old hair trick, for example. This ploy involves distributing human hair around the garden in such a way that deer will smell it and think there’s a person behind every petunia.
Some folks put hair in little bags and hang these on the plants. Others simply scatter hair along the ground. Hair clippings can be obtained from a barber shop, beauty salon or by simply pulling it out of our heads each time we see a deer.
My wife employed this trick with great success some years ago. Connie got her hair cut and asked the beautician to save the clippings.
The hair was then placed in a paper bag and left on the kitchen table while we went on vacation. We returned home to find the deer had not touched a thing in the garden the entire time we were gone.
Just think what would have happened if the hair was actually in the garden. We would have become true believers, for sure.
Then there is the renowned soap ruse. The soap ruse entails hanging or scattering small pieces of soap around the garden. (Those little soap bars they provide at motels are of ideal size.) The theory here is that deer are way too smart to hang around any place that offers such a puny, little piece of soap as that.
The soap ruse works well in combination with the lion manure trick. Readers may have read the suggestion that gardeners head down to the zoo and load up some lion manure for deer repellent.
The lion manure works best if you get the lion, too, but most folks don’t want to go to that kind of trouble. If the gardener has saved his little bars of motel soap, he can wash up after spreading lion manure around the premises.
The lion manure shenanigan isn’t recommended everywhere. This trick is said to be most effective in areas where the deer know something about lions. If a deer has never seen a lion, it looks at the big pile of manure and thinks the homeowner has one huge house cat.
Last but not least, we have the noise caper. The noise caper requires placing a noisemaker, such as a radio, tape recorder or teenager, in areas deer have been frequenting.
Experts recommend the radio be tuned to talk shows, such as Dr. Laura, on the theory that these will repel anything sooner or later. Heavy metal music and certain types of country western will annoy deer, too – as long as they can’t dance to it.
This farm news was published in the Sept. 12, 2007 issue of Farm World, serving Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan and Tennessee. |
| 9/12/2007 |
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