Banditos

There's been a much longer than usual gap since my last post, but I've got a good excuse.  Mr. Mulch takes an annual fishing trip to Montana and/or Wyoming each August, and since I don't fish and am usually busy getting one or another kid ready for school, I haven't accompanied him in the past.  This year, however, I realized the foolishness of that approach, so he had company.  My younger daughter (who does fish) and I tagged along on the Wyoming/Idaho portion of the trip, leaving the garden in the capable hands of my older daughter, who was very excited about taking custody of the veggies during tomato season.  


Or at least she was initially excited.  I neglected to tell her that invariably whenever Mr. Mulch goes on his August trip some kind of critter-related catastrophe usually occurs.  Last year, for example, the deer picked that particular week to finally breach our defenses and devour the beans, crop the carrots, and shear the chard.  I figured (hoped?) that our presence on the trip this year would alter the garden karma sufficiently to prevent any mishaps.  So we happily spent the week enjoying fabulous weather, gorgeous scenery, and -- for those who fished -- lots of action.

While we were enjoying the following...

View of Henry's Lake from the living room of the house we rented

Upper Mesa Falls -- with rainbow!

Yellowstone Canyon

Grand Teton Peak -- seen from Jackson Hole

... Our daughter was under siege back home.  Three days after we left, she did her morning garden patrol to discover with horror twenty odd tomatoes half eaten, strewn all over the beds.  The interloper had the nerve to simply take a bite or two from each before casting it aside and swiping another, leaving his calling card indiscriminately on every tomato he could reach, green or red.

Teeth marks!

Clearly this tomato was too young to die!

After investigating thoroughly, she determined that our unwelcome visitor was most likely a raccoon, initially lured onto the property by our compost pile -- new this year -- and quickly trading that discovery for the much more delectable goodies still fresh and tasty on the vine.  It was his insouciance that was most irritating; his casual disregard for the fruit itself.  And his terrible table manners, too.  He ate nothing completely, but simply ruined the tomatoes for anyone else.  Additional defensive measures were necessary.


I have to hand it to my daughter -- she was quite resourceful in her response to this incursion.  She managed to find enough deer netting to wrap most of the tomatoes, Christo-like, making them inaccessible to prying paws and sharp teeth.

Tomatoes wrapped in protective netting

By the time we came home -- very late on a Sunday night, she was prowling the garden,  flashlight in hand, looking for masked invaders and wishing she knew where we kept the air rifle.  At that point the carnage had slowed, mostly because the little bastard had already eaten anything he could reach, and the support for the higher vines wasn't sturdy enough to take the weight of what by now was probably a very fat raccoon.


We supplemented her defenses with a motion-detecting siren we had gotten to ward off deer who found their way in last year.  It's a nifty little device that emits an ear-splitting high-pitched siren and a pulsing strobe light when it's tripped by movement, and it worked quite well against deer, freaking them out entirely.  However, Rocky wasn't fazed by it in the least, though it kept me up most of the night.  It's uselessness was evident when we found this the next morning:

I want to wring his little neck!

So tonight, we're digging out the night vision goggles, the air rifle, and a few hand grenades.  This is war!