Alan Liere: The Venison in my Garden

The whitetail deer have been coming into my garden this summer, browsing on the cherry trees, grazing down the row of lettuce, pulling the onions. Nevertheless, I like these deer, I really do.

I like to watch their social interaction. I like to observe them as they drink daintily from the creek. I get a kick out of spying on the frisky spotted fawns in the spring and the love-crazed bucks in the fall.

Mostly, though, I love their venison backstrap marinated in Italian salad dressing and cooked rare over charcoal.

Venison is tasty. When I have my wild game dinner each spring, the venison shish-kabobs always go first. Even friends who do not hunt and do not appreciate wild game savor the shish-kabobs – as long as I identify it as “free range tenderloin.” If they don’t ask, I don’t tell. It’s the American way.

I have read about various methods for keeping deer out of the garden. Tall fences are said to work best, but there is a fenced garden up by Springdale, Washington – a most formidable structure.

Every time I drive by it in the early morning on my way to Lake Roosevelt, however, it is full of deer. Either those whitetails have learned to pole vault or the landowner is raising them. Anyway, I’d have a hard time justifying a $700 fence around a “hobby” garden plot.

I have heard that Irish Spring soap placed strategically in the garden keeps deer away, but I do not know why Irish Spring would be more effective than say, Dial or Lifebuoy, or even an underarm deodorant. Hair works too, I hear, but though I cut my own I don’t have much to show for it.

Somehow I can’t imagine stopping by the local barber shop to gather a pile from the floor.

Every time I think about keeping the deer out of the garden, I begin to feel guilty for being so selfish. Why, after all, would I care if the deer ate half or more of what I produce? I’m not exactly starving to death here, and I always plant more than I can use. For me, planting a garden is more of a ritual of spring than anything.

The reason for my selfishness, I guess, is that the deer have nothing invested in my garden. They don’t rototill, they don’t rake, they don’t seed, weed, feed, or water either. Giving away something for nothing is not consistent with the American work ethic and entrepreneurial spirit.

I feel the same way about feeding deer as I do about donating blood to mosquitoes or “spare change” to panhandlers. If those deer wanted to come up some morning and help me weed the strawberry patch, it would be a different story.

“But they’re so cu-u-u-te!” my friend Sharon says. “Look at those big, brown eyes. How can you chase them off?”

Sharon lives in town and does not understand that there is no correlation between cuteness and goodness. She has never had teenage children; she has never kept a thoroughbred horse. One of these days, a deer will walk into town and eat Sharon’s prize geraniums off her front porch. Only then will they cease to be cute.

Yes, the deer in my garden are gaining weight this summer. They will soon be eating tomatoes and squash, corn and carrots. Panhandlers. Thieves. By mid-October they will be absolutely fat. Then, it’s payback time.