Tag Archive for 'living with wildlife'

Why I love Irish Spring soap

Published on March 25, 2008 in deer herd and gardening. 3 Comments

In the arid West, deer pressure can be pretty intense.  People live on most  of the acreage near the waterways, they’ve diverted most of the water, and the areas that aren’t next to the streams and rivers are often too dry to be very productive.  The deer can get fierce in their need for the plants that you’re growing… and since it was their land and water in the first place, I sympathize to a point. 

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I’m happy to have a deer herd around, but I don’t want them browsing my gardens.  So I try to work with them.  I grow plants that they don’t like to eat, mostly cultivars of native species and old favorites.  Daylilies, lavenders, mints and hyssops work fine, and so do lilacs and potentillas.  I used to get plant lists from the state agricultural extension service, and now you can find lists of deer resistant plants online. 

Bob regularly sprays the twigs and foliage with an appalling mixture of rotten eggs, sour milk, garlic and red chili pepper (more on this later).

And I do love that Irish Spring soap.  On every newly planted tree, I tie a bar of Irish Spring in a knee-hi stocking at deer-nose height.  When it rains, that Irish Spring perfume works its way down the trunk and coats the surface of the ground… and deer detest it. 

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Here’s a bar of soap that made it though the winter, and to the deer it still stinks.  The bears hate Irish Spring too. 

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Here’s a bar of soap that a bear ripped out of its stocking and buried under a red twig dogwood.  I dug it up when I was weeding a few weeks later, and put it back up in another stocking, claw marks and all.  I think Irish Spring is one of those anti-deer miracles. 

If people say it doesn’t work, it’s because they haven’t tried it. 

Elk on the way to school

Published on January 15, 2008 in elk herd and roadkill. 1 Comment

Normally about 200 elk winter in the valley, and five years back in a particularly deep winter the wildlife biologists counted nearly 500.  This winter, there are plenty: I took these pictures from the car window on the way back from dropping Sam off at high school.  On the right side of the road is a herd of females.  

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 Elk travel in such tight herds that they’re easy to tell from the horses or cattle.  They stick together when they’re grazing or moving, and when the herd lies down, their rumps look like a pile of boulders.   They can jump standard fences without even trying–an elk fence is 10 feet tall–and they’re big: a grown-up lady can weigh in at 500 pounds, while a studly male can be 700 pounds.  (They’re officially called cows and bulls, but I’m not sure that’s entirely respectful.)  I took these photos from the driver’s seat window, and then I rolled down the passenger seat window for this Mom and her yearling twins. 

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She told them to scoot, seeing as the car was pulled onto the shoulder.

So they did. 

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The elk are spending the winter in the valley near the river, like they always have.  But it’s a hard winter every year these days, not because they starve but because the cars kill so many.  

There was a car accident and a dead elk last night on the road to town.  These animals are too big to be left beside the road so the Department of Transportation has a special elk truck fitted with a winch and a bed that carries two elk with room to spare.  They got the first one moved lickety split, along with another than had been thrown into the ditch and frozen.   (The following picture has been cropped so it’s not gross).

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We’re OK at living with elk, but we’re not so good at driving with them.