Eat, Deer
The people down the hill got some Adirondack chairs facing up this way which gives me a small sense of grandiosity, on site caretaker and single most occupier of this land that I am. I heard them speak once, at a local public forum, and they expressed their feelings of reverence for this hill and the low rising mountains behind it and I had to wonder were there people who get out less than I do. Not that the scenery is not nice but for mountain scenery in this area there is nicer. Or I may just be used to it. Two years ago after leaving New Orleans and driving 19 hours to get here I was myself somewhat overwhelmed by the scene of this place, and shortly after pulling through the gates and past the hand painted sign which implied this property to be something like that plantation in Gone with the Wind, I burst out laughing. Not in the funny, ha-ha sort of way but in the hysterical no one is stopping me and throwing me up against the police car sort of way. Because people like me don't occupy places like this.

In addition to feeling grandiose I feel annoyed, although you can call it paranoid, or some other common psychological problem, because the chairs make me feel onstage when I move about the place doing my chores. This feeling is much the same as my early-on problem with the 19th century bell tower (of what is now a baptist church) that rises high enough to be not only a very pretty site for me to look at but also gives the person up in there with binoculars full view of me and my rather skeletal morphology while I work or laze about the pool. Even though every time I use my own binoculars to look up into the bell tower, there is no one there with binoculars looking back at me. I think I am at a stage close to having worked through this problem of self- consciousness regarding people in bell towers with binoculars.

Yesterday I was down by the pond shoveling hardwood mulch into the back of a small four-wheel drive vehicle and everybody that passed by on the road waved at me. I have never before been waved at by attractive women in BMW's. And then I looked up and a church lady in a beater Chevy waves and smiles and I can only assume there is occurring some sort of celestial aligning that has people of all different socioeconomic persuasions being nice to each other.

Deer are eating my sunflowers and maybe too my young string bean plants but the deer were here first and I knew that place I put the garden was one of their main hangouts so whatever happens I will just try to be happy about, or, if I can't make lemonade out of lemons perhaps I will make deer sausage.

I am becoming a little smarter about poison ivy but still get regular attacks of it.

One of the women at the local art gallery/video store lets me spew ridiculous and perhaps in her subtle way encourages it and so I was being sort of full of myself and two more locals in the store said "who are you?" and then I told them, so I met two more people and am becoming quite the social butterfly. One woman was getting Meet the Fockers for her husband and I said oh my god that was the worst movie I have seen this year and she put it back and got something else. But then after she left I was shown some of the husband's artwork (sort of Bosch meets the California Raisins), there be beau coup artists hiding out here, and I felt that someone who can create such work as he should be allowed to watch whatever he damn well pleases, so I hope he gets to watch that movie, soon, and bears me no ill will for my temporary preventing of him seeing it when he wanted to. I myself got Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and consider it now my favorite Wes Anderson flick.

By the way, for my ten or twelve regular readers, if you don't want to check the site and be pissed off that I haven't posted for awhile you can thanks to the genius of our webmaster be alerted by email when I post something new. I will leave it to you to figure out how to do that. I'm going to copy this to a small device and take it up to the bighouse and post it now. I had high hopes for those sunflowers but deer gotta eat too.
- jimlouis 5-18-2005 4:51 pm

I loved the frogman rescue mission, so Johnny Quest.
- steve 5-18-2005 5:57 pm [add a comment]


and the beatlesesque yellow (mini)submarine. a million yuks. you need some dogwire for a garden fence. its us against them out there.
- bill 5-18-2005 6:17 pm [1 comment]


Perhaps you could borrow Gracie, the almost perfect Husky mix. She's very good at chasing deer. Not so good with catching, as far as I can tell. But chasing deer up and down mountains is her specialty.
- mark 5-19-2005 12:41 am [add a comment]


You and Gracie and D should come out. But honestly, even though it hurts a little to see stuff eaten before maturity, this particular garden is as much for the deer as anyone. I have access to way more vegetable matter than I can eat.
- jimlouis 5-19-2005 5:59 pm [add a comment]


urban version of JL logic : hi you nice little rats. sure take what you want. need a can opener?
- bill 5-19-2005 6:30 pm [add a comment]


I'll bring my rifle with scope.
- tom moody 5-19-2005 6:36 pm [add a comment]


I have offered a couple of locals 30 bucks a pop for groundhog removal, up to a limit of 10, so sure bring the gun, you might could earn your gas money out here. But I'm no so over run with deer that I want to kill em over a few veggies. There about the same amount that hang out here each year, a family or two, six or seven max. I have mouse problem in the bighouse again though, bounty on them is 5 bucks a pop, bb gun provided. They laughing at my conventional traps with peanut butter, they so small they lick em clean almost every time without setting them off. I hate to go glue trap but I'm close. I need to find another cat too, I think.
- jimlouis 5-19-2005 11:22 pm [add a comment]


we had mice on kensington. second floor apt over mine. glue traps didnt work at all. that green pellet shit in the plastic trays knocked out about eight of them in one and a half weeks. all gone now. the roaches didnt like combat, now they gone too. the water bugs i kind of like.
- bill 5-20-2005 6:24 am [add a comment]


bill, you are crazy. our cat has been hunting waterbugs lately and i must have come between her and one she was playing with the other night. i got out of bed to go into kitchen when i felt something on my leg. it was a water bug the size of texas. and. i. freaked. i woke mike up and made him search the entire house for it. after he gave up and went back to bed the cat caught it again and i crushed it with a parenting magazine. the water bugs you kind of like...
- linda 5-20-2005 9:31 pm [add a comment]


i suggest garden clogs for stomping on them almost human friends of mine.
- bill 5-20-2005 9:42 pm [add a comment]


water bugs=American or "smoky brown" roaches; roaches=German roaches
- tom moody 5-20-2005 11:09 pm [add a comment]


Animals that shit where they eat kinda gross me out. But live and let live. Animals that shit where I eat are a whole 'nother thing.
- mark 5-20-2005 11:20 pm [add a comment]


i love bugs. as long as they are outside. i don't even mind some inside, the ones that move slow. spiders are ok. centipedes, which we had at 3rd street, make me want to go to a hotel. they are too fast and even the cat wasn't having none of them. most bugs i find inside the house i trap under a cup, bring them outside and set them loose in the street. except centipedes. and water bugs crawling on me in the dark.
- linda 5-21-2005 4:30 am [add a comment]


D is a vet, and as such has to deal with the innards of dogs and cats in a manner that I don't think I could handle. But if there's a spider or funky looking beetle inside the house, she's been known to shriek. So I get the job of bug relocation.

The biggest critter issue, however, is the gophers. They're all over her property, and uncomfortably close to the foundation.

Louie, Gracie and Max do their best to keep the population in check, but the situation calls for a professional. I think I may need to locate a capture/release specialist or the gopher colony will never be addressed.
- mark 5-21-2005 4:46 am [add a comment]





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