The Midnight Snacker

   I took an early poke around the garden this morning, while it was still cool and quiet.  When I reached the back of the property, I spotted my dwarf kale, gnawed!

 

 

   I wondered if it might have been a rabbit.  I've only seen a rabbit in the yard twice over the years.  Looking around the garden, everything else - the trees, plots, and raised beds - seemed to be untouched.  It must have been a deer.  How polite that he or she limited their snacking to a single windowbox of kale.

   The next hour was spent puttering and hoeing and observing what had changed since last night (a Burpee's Butterbush squash is poking through, and the most recently planted rows of Calima beans are coming up, too).  I began hoeing weeds in the north garden, but stopped dead in my tracks when I saw this:

 

"He got my pepper plant!!  Bugger!"  

   Only the cat overheard, thankfully.  I couldn't believe my eyes.   We live right in town (albeit a town on the Alaska Highway, so I guess incidents with wildlife should never really come as unexpected).  We have never had problems with animals eating what we grow, unless you count grasshoppers or root maggots, depending on the year.  (Oh, or the summer the magpie family chewed the newly formed cabbage heads down to the ground and pulled out marigold petals to toss around the garden.  That was done for their own amusement, though, not for nourishment.)  Deer have never really come into town in the summertime, either.

   Another tour through the garden, looking more closely this time.  Sure enough, I spotted more kale had been chewed on and there were two deer tracks going through the rows of beans in the south garden.

  Fingers crossed that their taste for garden produce is restricted to kale and peppers, or I might have to start camping overnight in the yard!

 

Update - June 26 

   Camping, it is.  Just joking.  Maybe.  

   New discoveries this morning:  some snow peas, dry bush beans, and cabbage got eaten.  I don't know if The Midnight Snacker got them two nights ago or if he came back last night.

 

 

 

 

 Update - June 27

   This morning, we discovered that the tops of a few potato plants had been nibbled, an onion pulled out and left on the lawn, and a 2 foot stretch of dry soup bean plans chewed off.  Arrhg!