Deer Rat Regrets

I really should have shot the four deer when I saw them that morning in the mist.

Normally, deer don't often bother me or my garden.  I don't grow a lot of choice deer-loved plants (except for the roses).

For instance, I grow but a few tulips, even though my wife likes them.  They simply don't display well in my Flint Hills garden, high on a windswept hill where the prevailing gales are sure to decimate their flowers in a few days.  Daffodils, despised by the deer, do better in the wind anyway and so I plant loads of those.

I do, or did, however, grow 50 or so bright red tulips in a single small raised bed at the beginning of our driveway.  I do it despite their expense and the transitory nature of tulips on the prairie in a blatant effort to gain brownie points from the missus. They are probably 30 or so feet from the next living plant (not including the mown prairie grass).  So how did the darned deer find them?

Mrs. ProfessorRoush is not happy, so I and the Security Council (the Brittany Spaniel and the Italian Greyhound) are declaring war.  It'll be nastier than most.  There will be vast quantities of soap and other human scents expended.  We'll have to extend the electric fence ramparts.  We will form mutually-supporting treaties with neighboring territories and their barking dogs.  I may resort to motion-activated defensive devices.  The nuclear option will be considered.

Or I may just stop growing tulips.  Mrs. ProfessorRoush will probably get over it someday, although I'm not going to hold my breath.