"This Means WAR......sort of......"

Yesterday morning, I walked out to find that during the night, "Bambi" came and "snacked" on my newly planted raspberry bushes and strawberry plants!  I know it was Bambi because of the hoof tracks left in the sand.

You've seen this "before" photo earlier......

Here is "after" snack time.  Raspberries, strawberry plant, and pussy willow.....all chewed upon.

The one volunteer strawberry plant in this bed had all of its leaves stripped from it, but thankfully, a new one was just appearing and hadn't gotten eaten, so there is hope for it thriving yet.

I noticed one of the marble edge pieces on the blueberry bed was knocked down and that is when I saw that a few of the strawberry plants in that bed were missing some leaves.  The horror of it all!!!!

That's when I went quickly back inside to the computer and Googled "keeping deer from your garden".  This is one of the links I found.  It seemed easy enough and certainly low cost to implement it, so I followed his instructions and now have my own "deer alarm" in place.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_ySzNEuuKc

I have a bucket, topped with 5 tin cans, holes drilled in their sides, and all connected by fishline.  The fishline is then stretched slightly taut through slots that I sawed in the tops of some garden poles.....

.......connecting to another 5 cans, all similarly connected, and sitting on another bucket.  The theory is when deer stealthily come closer to the tasty plants, they will not see the fishing line (which is a low test strength so in case the deer gets tangled in it, it can easily break it) and pushes against the fishing line, it causes the cans to fall onto the cement pad and ground creating a CLANGING that "should" scare the critter away and hopefully cause it to have second thoughts about returning.  :)  The fishing line is higher than Copper's head/back, so she shouldn't trigger it.  The lowest point is when it comes down from the pole to the cans on the cement pad, which is low enough for her to trigger, but I will be able to easily see (or hear) if this happens prior to our going to bed for the night.  I suppose something this simple can't be entirely free of possible maintenance, right?

It is hard to see, but the second bucket with cans on it is in the upper left hand side of the photo.

Here is a better photo of it.  Remember, both can collections are connected to each other, so when pressure is on the fishing line, both come tumbling down, so the noise is doubled.  It works and is pretty loud......I can only imagine the sound would "seem" magnified in the dead of night........or so I "hope".  LOL