Monday, June 12, 2006

Mystery garden raider

Do birds eat broccoli?

Do squirrels like brussels sprouts?

Well, we've discovered that the fortress my husband built around the veggie garden is not impenetrable. Nothing has chewed through the chicken wire and lattice and nothing has dug under the fence. There are no footprints. So either a bird or an herbivore with a parachute raided our garden or a squirrel or a very lightweight woodchuck climbed over the fence to snack on the broccoli and brussels sprouts. But only those two delicacies. It must be saving the kale, cabbage, and assorted lettuces for tonight. Darn.

7 comments:

MojoMan said...

Big cutworms?

Susan Gets Native said...

Oh, come on...
You KNOW it was a bunny.
All of it's little leaf-chewing friends sent it over on a catapult.
:-)

LauraHinNJ said...

I hadn't thought of a catapult!

;-)

My DH put the trap out this evening - hope we don't catch the neighbor's cat like the last time.

Mojoman: you're kidding about the cutworms, right? I don't see any bugs out there at all. What a mystery. It has to be the groundhog climbing the fence.

Taradharma said...

snails? They do this to my broccoli and my marigolds.

Anonymous said...

Might be moles, voles, chipmunks, shrews - which can get over or through most fencing anyway or come from underground tunnels.

Or Gnomes and fairies!

Taradharma said...

Laura, I took a class a couple of summers ago on moles and voles and how to kill them in the garden, how to identify their holes (mole, vole, gopher?). Pretty fascinatin' stuff, I tell you whut.

LauraHinNJ said...

Yesterday the garden was hit again. The trap was in the garden, closed but empty, when I got home. The half-eaten apple lay next to the empty trap.

This morning we found an opossum in the trap, but I'm not sure he could have climbed up the fence into the garden. I think it was the groundhog who is too smart to be trapped.

Tdharma: I'd love to hear how to tell their holes apart. I think we have moles that live in the ivy - one crawled across my foot a couple years ago while working in the garden. Very dark gray - long and slender, flat body.