Front Porch: Deer smart enough to adapt to gardeners’ tricks aimed to keep them out of garden

The deer wars continue. This is chapter two, with new information.

Two weeks ago I wrote about my deer-versus-human battle over the flowers I planted in my front yard. I always save the delicate stuff for my elevated deck out back, putting the hardy and deer-resistant blooms out front – with appropriate noxious smelling (to deer) potions applied liberally.

That usually works.

But not this year, as geraniums and even the rhubarb in my side yard are being eviscerated by Bambi’s mother. And my marigolds, which have never been touched by deer before, are being eaten.

Shortly after my words appeared in print, I began seeing the offender up close and personal. And I do think it’s just the one doe among the many who traverse our property. She’s a good size mother deer with two fawns, adorable with their spotted rumps and long gangly legs.

I watched from my kitchen window late one afternoon as she nonchalantly meandered over to the dianthus I have planted in a wooden container and slowly began munching. She then walked slowly to the other side of the small sub-alpine firs nearby and paused there to nurse one of her babies.

When ready, and in her own time and with me now in plain sight, she walked across the street and up the hill, with the young ones scampering after her.

Clearly, I’m not doing enough, so I added to the arsenal a new and really awful-smelling liquid spray for the flowers and surrounding area, one with cloves and garlic and whatnot in it, supposedly a nasal irritant to deer.

Doesn’t matter, she’s immune.

I needed more expertise in this war, so I called Michael Atamian for help. Atamian is a wildlife biologist for the Spokane District of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. He explained, all logical and useful information for a city girl like me.

It’s likely, he said, there are multiple generations of deer who have been born and raised in my neck of the woods … or neighborhood. Though they remain wild, they are accustomed to life in my locale and used to the presence of people. It’s home for them.

As for the taste barrier products I’ve deployed, deer get accustomed to them, too, he said, mostly because those defenses are all over the place, in my yard and others. And, for example, with the solution I’ve used that smells like coyote urine, it works until the deer realize that there are no actual coyotes accompanying the smell, so they learn to ignore it.

He mentioned that because of the dry and especially hot year we’re having, there are fewer food options out there for wildlife, as well as less water. A nicely watered lawn is quite appealing to lie down on, it seems. More on that in a minute.

He also said nursing two babies requires a massive expenditure of mama deer’s energy, which requires her to get as much nutrition as she can wherever she can. She may be experiencing nutritional stress, making her more brazen.

I told him that the last time I saw her move off our property, she wasn’t putting her full weight on her right hind leg. Atamian said if she’s injured, she is probably not inclined to cover a lot of ground searching for food. And also, it seems, according to the biologist, that there is something of a pecking order among deer, in which “the stronger deer can bogart the best spots and harass the others.”

As to that last thing, it might be so. In the past I have often seen a few does travel together through my backyard with their babies. This mama deer has always been solo with her fawns.

So, how to overcome all this? Atamian said some people he’s talked with have turned sprinklers on during the night, which can bring about surprising results.

“You might wake up to find a moose parked on your lawn enjoying the shower.”

There are scare machines and, as I am well aware, a variety of liquid solutions to spread about.

“They all work for a little bit, but anything new that you try will work better.”

The only thing that works permanently, he said, is an 8-foot-tall, sturdy non-see-through fence put up surrounding everything, and keeping the gate closed at all times.

That kind of fencing is not an option in my yard. So here we are. Stalemate. Actually, surrender.

What with everything I’ve come to understand, I’m less passionate about protecting my front yard flowers. An injured deer needing to feed her babies seems a bit more important, so I’m ending the war. For this year.

I can’t undo the things I’ve already sprayed, but I think I’ll stop applying additional doses. Perhaps mama deer will find greener pastures, but if not, I’ll just enjoy whatever she leaves behind for me and sit on my deck out back and admire the potted dahlias and other flowers there.

But next year, I will don the chainmail again, and the war of the geraniums will begin anew.