Connections: Bambi vs. Fido
Call me a tree hugger. I like deer. I even like the deer who bed down in a hedgerow between our house and the library, or across the lane in a bushy area between two neighbors’ houses, or at the far, overgrown side of the property, beyond the barn. (Yes, even I admit, there have been too many deer in the village, too many for comfort and too many for traffic safety, too.)
Regardless of the damage the deer had done to our garden, I had always been happy to watch their comings and goings, as they strolled or trotted across the yard, or, on occasion, settled down for a rest smack-dab in the middle of the lawn, as if they were in charge. I have been known to pride myself on not having put up elaborate deer fencing to keep them out. But then we decided to get a dog.
Goodie — our late, lamented, last family dog — had been allowed to roam the neighborhood unsupervised, but times have changed. How long would a free-range dog live with traffic as crazy as it now is? How long has it been since that beloved, footloose basset hound (whose name I can’t recall, though I bet someone will write in to remind me) was the unofficial mayor of Newtown Lane?
Once we had decided to get a dog, we had to face the reality that either we would need to take it out on a leash for regular walks or we would have to fence in our backyard.
I admit I felt like a bit of a hypocrite when we decided on the latter. The modest, and all but invisible dark-wire fence we put up is only five feet high, but so far it has kept out the deer. I guess our particular deer aren’t up to scratch as jumpers.
We are beginning to observe various old shrubs and flowers that had been fodder for the deer coming slowly back to life. A few very old rose bushes, I’m happy to report, are going to survive the deer-ravaging they had suffered over the last few years. I imagine that soon we’ll even be able to remove the protective wire barriers we had placed around the roses; maybe we’ll even plant some new ones.
My friend Galen Williams, who has designed gardens here for decades, dropped by the other day and made note of the fact that tiny hosta leaves were poking up and daylilies trying to sprout. The daylilies had been totally devoured and had long since disappeared from view. The hostas, planted by a previous generation decades ago, used to surround the house in profusion, but ferns had taken their place in recent years. Now, I’m trying to give away ferns to any friends who would like transplants.
It seems amusing that, these days, the deer are free-range villagers and the dogs are captive, from Main Street to Northwest Woods.
Sookie, our delightfully shaggy new mutt from the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons, isn’t much of a barker, but she whines and barks excitedly — and dances on her hind legs like a circus dog — when she sees deer in the front yard, beyond the fence. Clearly, her heart’s desire is to escape and get at them. But she loves her backyard realm and hasn’t, at least so far, figured out that she probably could dig her way out if she put her mind to it.
Will the deer stay away, or will they get hungry enough come fall to venture a leap over the fence? And, if they do leap across, will little Sookie’s bad-girl terrier displays chase them away again from the old roses? Only time will tell, but so far, the score is deer zero, dog one.