My Side of the Plate: If you cultivate, we will devastate

A couple of weeks ago, my editor addressed the situation of playing rabbit “dodge ball” and what was required to prevent a slight bump followed by the squishy sound beneath your rig’s radial tires as you turned one of the little critters into road pizza.

If drivers are alert a pygmy Frisbee should never occur on Whidbey Island because the rabbits aren’t stupid and rarely stray in front of vehicles. They are more concerned about staying alive so they can devastate flower and vegetable gardens.

Them little varmints can lay waste to a garden faster than Grant took Richmond!

Sure you can string wire in hopes of keeping them out but if they have their sights set on something tasty, they will dig under the wire.

Unfortunate for the people but fortunate for the bunnies, they are protected so you can’t use electric wire to zap them or resort to the ultimate solution — a blast of number-six lead from a .410 shotgun when they begin sniffing around the tomatoes.

My lady and I contemplated a backyard garden before discovering we had hoards of bunnies living in holes beneath the bushes and in caves along the sea wall. We figured what the rabbits didn’t get the slugs would.

Slugs and snails will drink themselves to death if you set out a saucer of beer, but bunnies would probably turn up their noses at Miller Lite and demand Jim Beam. Come to think of it, maybe a drunk bunny would wander into the path of a vehicle.

On another topic of garden devastation by animals is deer, the ones you have to be especially alert for while driving because they figure they own the asphalt.

I darn near collected one of the Taylor Road denizens on the way home last week.

The little buck wasn’t much larger than a good sized German shepherd but would have caused a bunch of damage to the front of my HHR if I’d nailed him.

Thank goodness I wasn’t driving fast.

In truth, deer along the road are almost as good as a police officer with a radar gun in getting drivers to slow down.

If rabbits can “do” a garden like U.S. Grant, deer are Sherman’s March to the Sea.

Deer aren’t particular in their dining habits and a garden with a variety of items planted becomes an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Tomatoes, corn, lettuce, carrot tops, you name it and they’ll gorge themselves.

The only way to prevent a total loss is to fence all sides and the top of your garden plot, which tends to be a problem when growing corn. Ten foot or taller metal fence posts are expensive and gardeners have to weigh the cost of the harvest as opposed to purchasing corn from Albertson’s.

Deer are also especially fond of roses and planting American Beauties in an area infested with deer is a no-brainer. If you plant, you have no brains.

A rose is a rose and should be displayed rather than eaten and to me, there is something wrong with rose bushes wrapped in chicken wire.

That’s why Sherri and I have artificial ones decorating our abode.