August 2016 – realreality Productions

As I said, in Part I, something was eating my garden. ;-)

I’m happy to share my land with my animal buddies but I can’t let them destroy my property.

Well, now I had a problem, yet a perfect opportunity for a photo/film project to identify the suspects and capture some backyard wildlife photo/film clips.

And just as important, to learn how to protect my garden and shed. There is a volume of excellent non-lethal solutions to deal with any animal, published on the Net. In my case, it’s been a trial and error process. What I’ve learned is that nothing is 100% effective but setting up deterrents seems to work best.

To protect the garden, I erected a 7 foot deer fence. That should be sufficient, if not a bit of overkill. I could add a scarecrow. – we’ll see… ;-)

Protecting the shed would be a bit more difficult. I first had to find any openings that an animal could use, to move in and out from, under the shed. Once that was done, I blocked all but one opening and laid some hay in it. This would help me ascertain if an animal was still living there. Once I saw that the hay was not disturbed, I blocked that remaining opening. I left a radio playing in the shed, setup a couple of solar lights and spread some red pepper around the shed area. The goal was to make the site uncomfortable.
Eventually, I will have to excavate around the shed and install chickenwire. Here’s a link that details how to do that, for those interested. http://guelph.ca/living/pets-and-animals/city-wildlife/5376-2/

Here are some more of the culprits, roaming around my neighborhood and yard. ;-)

click on the images for a closer view…

The Wild Rabbit