Cohabitation

They’ve cleaned me out of everything they could reach. The deep snow is crisscrossed with tracks leading from one leafless bush to another, and it’s only winter’s frosty rug that protects the perennials they overlooked in the fall. I’ve never developed a successful oversight plan, one that would reduce plant damage or limit black-legged ticks. I spray certain shrubs (usually too late), but I leave the pumpkins out in hopes of some bonus nature viewing. If you called this a ‘squishy liberal attitude’ you’d be right.

There are 100,000 white-tailed deer in Connecticut these days (4 of them are my dependents). About 40,000 hunting permits are sold each year to us, a deer’s only real remaining predator. Even with my bad math skills, I can tell the deer are winning. But this has been a more arduous winter than recent ones. A bad winter is probably another population management tool, right?

Not so much. CT DEEP: “Deer decrease their metabolic rate during winter, reducing food requirements to about half.” If their stored fat runs out, they burn muscle and can even burn the fat in their bone marrow. They lay low in “deeryards”, usually a copse of coniferous trees, or a laurel grove, that protects them from wind and has less snow on the ground. Have you noticed how a hemlock’s branches droop until it sheds snow outside the tree’s circumference? Deer have noticed. That drooping brings more branches into a deer’s reach. They live in a house they can eat.

Our weather is more unstable now and can be fierce, but animals and birds have evolved for it. Most can operate at a loss for a while. CT DEEP: “Deer in relatively good condition can fast for several weeks without harmful effects.” Coyotes might take a fawn, but it’s rare. Feeding deer in winter is a bad idea. Their 4-part stomach is made to digest woody vegetation, not hay and corn. Deer have died with full stomachs.

I like feeding birds. Apparently, I sustain my ungulates too. Each year our plants and shrubs revive and grow back…sort of. My deer think that our hostas and remaining ornamentals, now thankfully buried, are a salad bar. Good thing there are no elk around here. I gave up on having an impeccably beautiful yard and am working on creating an ecologically effective one. By “working” I mean the opposite of working. I won’t be replanting any flower beds if I can help it. If you asked, I’d blame my bad back, not my liberal attitude.  

This February life got tough. Deer were willing to chow down on Hollies and Mountain Laurel and Rhododendrons. At night my yard is a den of thieves. My friend Steve has a meadow that he says hosts two dozen deer some evenings. Yikes.

The snow remains deep. I’ll be watching just before the trees leaf out this spring to see if there are still four deer.

The UConn Extension service has a Deer Management PDF with a deer-resistant landscape guide you can peruse.

George Jacobi