Wile E. Cottontail
Wile E. was here. (Photo: author)
I was so excited to get my fall garden going that I didn’t give much thought to those little cottontail rabbits I’d seen along the creek behind my fence last spring. Well, I’m thinking of them now, one in particular.
It seems cottontails savor the taste of newly emerged bean leaves, or so I assume after finding four dozen of my bean seedlings chewed down to the stems and a cottontail rabbit lazily lounging — before I startled it — next to my garden shed.
Twenty yards of chicken wire later, I’d enclosed the bean beds and replanted. Apparently, this meant war. The blossoms on my pentas were the next to go — but only the pink ones, not the white. When there were no more pink penta flowers to chomp, Wile E. Rabbit started in on the petunias.
That day, I put bricks, rocks and anything I could find along the fence to keep rabbits from sneaking under and into the garden. That evening, I realized the problem is worse than I thought: The rabbit has established a base camp inside the perimeter and is living under my garden shed. I tried the tools on hand at the time to run it out — my son’s plastic lightsaber and a garden hose — but the rabbit remained in its bunker.
The Hav-a-Heart trap I bought hasn’t solved my problem yet, either. My nine-year old baited it with bermuda hay and carrots, but apparently that’s not what the bun is after. We did see it sniffing around the trap but not bothering to check out the goodies. So tonight we set it up with romaine lettuce, hoping some leafy greens will lure it out for relocation. I’m hoping it’ll work, but I don’t want to underestimate this bunny; I’ll look for trip wires and falling anvils when I check the trap tomorrow morning.
How do you keep wild critters out of your garden?
