Oh Deer!

Our little Daylily garden on our 20 acres of heavily wooded forest borders the State Park here in Northeast Florida. Away from all the city lights, it gets really dark at night. Sometimes late at night if I go outside I can hear strange sounds coming from the dense woods just beyond the range of my flashlight. Sounds that I never hear in the daylight. I don’t know what kind of creature makes these sounds but my young daughter won’t venture far beyond the back door after dark. Of course the park has a five foot wire fence along it’s perimeter as I have seen on a nice sunny day while venturing through the woods to check out the back of our property line. I noticed that the wire fence was pulled down in places as if something large and heavy had tried to climb over it. I meant to mention that to the Park Ranger. I also noticed several paths traversing through our property. Something has been through here and it looks like its been often. Recently I have been puzzled about the condition of some of our daylilies. A number of them are missing some of their healthy green foliage, like they were hit by a weed eater or string trimmer. I wasn’t too worried about it because they will grow back. What kind of creatures do you think could be wandering through our yard when no one was watching? Knocking over flower pots and munching on fresh green leaves and flower buds too. A few pictures will tell many words. Yep! You’re right. You guessed it. DEER. More than one too. Three to five young females along with their mother stumbled onto our Daylily garden and they were not about to leave. We took a few pictures, enjoyed their visit before our presence frightened them away. I know they will be back when no one is watching, early one morning. We tried to discourage them from eating our lovely daylilies by spraying some Deer repellant around. But it stinks so bad that even I don’t want to be in the garden. Don’t know if it works yet. What if they like it? Then what? chomp chomp