The Mountain Beaver Saga

Since it's the weekend and some gardening is going to happen, I thought I'd do an update on my ongoing Mountain Beaver battle.  Here's a brief summary:  a Mountain Beaver (named Butt Head) lives in the bushes on the edge of our yard.  Every year he waits until our new raspberry shoots have grown long and lush, then he chops them off with his sharp little teeth and carries them off to his evil lair.  We had a total harvest of about 10 berries last year. It makes me so mad I could spit (as my Grandma always said).  After several years of trying an electric fence solution, I finally gave up on it.  I just never felt confident that it was working, either because my kids had turned it off when they played in the yard or because the power supply would fail.  I was constantly preoccupied with checking to see if it was functioning properly.  I was living a life of paranoia and obsession... a shell of a woman.

 So this year I just put up a chicken wire fence.  I like it because I can actually see that it's working.  It may not look great, but it's totally serving its purpose.  I just used lengths of rebar every two or three feet, which I wove through the wire and hammered into the ground.  I tacked down the bottom edge of the chicken wire with tree stakes to make sure BH couldn't push his way under.  True story...on the day that I went to Home Depot to buy the tree stakes my husband was out in the yard and saw BH walk around the edge of the fence and try to nose his way under it.  What a little s#@t!

Happily, he was not successful.  See how nicely everything's growing in!  I'm feeling very hopeful.

The Saga continues...Part 4