We had a dog briefly when we moved to George's neighborhood. The deer didn't approach our house but were devouring everything of the neighbors on either side of us.
After we lost our dog, we devised a method that others might find interesting. We surrounded our garden with a four-foot high chicken wire fence. But, then, we surrounded that with three strands of electric fence about 6-8 inches outside the chicken wire. One strand was just above the top of the chicken wire; one strand was as close to the ground as possible without shorting out all the time (4-6"), and the third strand about 8-10 inches above that bottom strand. We powered it with the little solar fencer that we had used when we lived out in the woods. We had to stake down and block the bottom of the chicken wire or the woodchucks, rabbits, etc would dart past the electric wire and get in. But the setup kept out deer for close to 15 years. We were backing away from gardening and neglecting necessary upkeep of the fence or, probably, it would still work. The idea of it was that deer don't like things they don't understand; they come to investigate the fencing. When they bend over to check out the chicken wire, they get zapped by the wire. At least that seems to be what happened. They could have leapt over the fence effortlessly at any time; but, having been zapped in the investigation, they stayed away. Of course, if there were lots of plots fenced this way, the deer might surmount their inclinations and just start jumping in. But, it's worth a try -- a fencer is pricey, but they last forever; wire is cheap and durable. As for body odor, I remember quite clearly the invention of the term "BO" and how it was rammed into the consciousness of a public which, until then, had apparently lacked adequate terms of derision for people who didn't bathe multiple times a day and apply chemicals to preserve their purity. I was an eastern european kid living in a family that was not very assimilated to the mainstream and it was impossible for me to achieve approval. Interestingly, my family practiced housekeeping that would have to be called compulsively clean. Their standards were extremely stringent when it came to cleanliness or sanitation. But it was all easily possible in the framework of the once-a-week bath, and deodorant was completely unknown. My personal conclusion after all that is that odor isn't all that hard to minimize and, moreover, odor doesn't have to be absolutely extirpated to make society bearable. Andrejs George Frantz wrote: > Deer have avoided our yard since we got our dog a little over three years > ago. _______________________________________________ RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for: [email protected] http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org
