“Your deer ate my wife’s petunias and I want to know what you are going to do about it?”

“Excuse me?”

“I just moved into one of the rental houses that borders your ranch,” said the voice on the telephone, “and yesterday my wife planted $60 worth of bedding plants in our backyard and this morning they are all gone. And I want to know what you are going to do about it?”

“I’ll be right over.” I recognized this situation as one that demanded my immediate attention, so I saddled up Gentleman and rode over to his place. Sure enough, there were deer tracks and other reminders indicating the presence of deer. And a newly planted garden had been recently defoliated.

“I see the deer got you pretty good last night,” I said as Gentleman reached over the wire fence and took a big bite out of the one shrub left standing.

“You think it’s funny do you,” my neighbor shrieked. “I’ll have you know that my wife spent all day planting those flowers.”

“I should have warned you. Around here you’ll have to learn to live with the deer. If you look around, you’ll notice that the other folks in the neighborhood have either planted deer-proof shrubs or erected some kind of barrier.” I could see that my new neighbors were disgusted with my solution and the fact that I did not reimburse them for the damage that “my deer” did.

About a week later I got another phone call requesting my immediate presence. Once again, Gentleman and I meandered over to the new neighbor’s place only to find a three-generation family of deer munching on a freshly planted flower garden. Only this time the deer were trapped inside the neighbor’s backyard by a solar powered fence.

“I see you took my advice and put up a fence. I’ll help you scare the deer out of your yard.” I just had to laugh as they jumped the 2-foot “barrier.”

It wasn’t too long after that that I noticed the new neighbors cleaning up an awful mess in their front yard. “What the heck happened? It looks like you got hit by a tornado?”

“It’s your raccoons,” said my neighbors. “They came in the night and tipped over the garbage cans we had set out for the trash men. We’ve been picking up our trash all morning over the entire neighborhood. What are you going to do about your raccoons?”

“Oh, I should have warned you about the raccoons and other nocturnal animals that strike in the night. Around here the neighbors just set their alarms for 5 a.m. to put their trash cans out when all the animals have gone to bed for the day.”

“That is your answer? To get up in the middle of the night? You’ve got to be kidding?”

I assured them that I wasn’t kidding and after that episode I never did actually speak to the neighbors ever again. But you can imagine my embarrassment when I read a letter to the editor in our local paper demanding to know what I was going to do about the “murderer” taking refuge on my ranch. It seems that “my bobcat,” which I must admit does take up occasional residence on the ranch, had eaten their pet cat, Whiskers, for dinner. The writer of the letter demanded to know what I was going to do about this terrible tragedy?

So, you can imagine my relief when a month later I noticed a “For Rent” sign in front of Whisker’s former residence. The couple was loading up their possessions in their minivan to move to a more civilized neighborhood. I did notice on their van was a “Greenpeace” bumper sticker and in the lower right-hand corner of the van’s rear window was the green leaf emblem for The Nature Conservancy.

Nature is indeed a wonderful thing and needs our support... it’s just that some people just can’t stand to get real close to it.