Relating to Critters

It is said that the three most important words in real estate are: location, location, location. Geography matters, and no more so than in my spouse's love or hate relationship with chipmunks. As people who read this blog know, we have been having our fair share of critter trials in our yard this year. It is now not limited to small critters, but big ones, like deer. While the wife rails against the critters and their damage in the yard, they become some of her best buddies when they are not in the yard. She well knows the damage caused by the critters, dug out plants, flower buds nipped, plants denuded of foliage.  Land Girl and her relationship with critters, is like love-hate relationship with the animals, with the love or the hate relationship simply explained by geography, or place.

If they are in our yard and doing damage, they are pests (a weed is simply a plant in the wrong desired location), while if they are not in our yard they are cute, and adorable. With a great deal of rain recently the deer have migrated into our yard from the nearby wetland area. They like eating the flowers, and some vegetables. We know they are deer since the succulent flower buds or young growth have been mowed off at near  my waist height, or below (depending on the plant). This just adds to the plant destruction. The deer have cut off anemone, lilies, Maltese cross and other plants, which will now not bloom. I wonder why they cannot eat weeds, or the foliage of volunteer trees popping up. I have to say they are lazy bending over when they only succulent foliage or flower buds are too good to pass up.

lily with flower buds and foliage mowed
off by deer

After complaining about the deer in our backyard, a day or two later we are heading on a camping trip and traveling on highway 8 west of Pembine, but east of Dunbar when she says be careful as there were deer ahead in the road. I too had seen the deer, which turned out to be a doe and fawn, oh so cute. The mother deer saw us and moved the fawn and herself off the road. Deer are way too prevalent. Going to southeast WI about six weeks ago, we must have counted over 12 dead deer lying at the edge of the road. I wonder how many dead deer will be on the roadside once fall arrives.

Anemone with flower and foliage mowed
off by deer

Once we got the campground and set up, and did some other chores, Land Girl noticed a chipmunk or two around the campsite. We have seen them there before. She then proceeded to lecture them to not eat our propane line like they had done a few years ago. After the propane line was replaced, we placed a copper netting over the line to help prevent those cute little critters from gnawing on the line. She had heard the gnawing on the propane line at night and I did not believer her. Not unlike the noises she said she hears in the fireplace. At another campground we heard and saw them jump up onto the camper's frame. They were not lovable at that time. Land Girl cannot sleep at those times, as she wonders what the critters are up to. 

During the few days we were at the campground, Land Girl developed quite a nice relationship with the small chipmunks. They would run over her feet, and once jumped up on to me, hitting my hip, but apparently wanting to land in my lap so I could pet it. I was rather startled at how bold it was. It occurred to me that the fur of the chipmunk, in some parts, was like the hair color of my wife's hair, and we all know redheads stick together. A hummingbird was even attracted to her hair at the campsite. Late it migrated to the red white gas cylinder on our camp stove. If my wife were a bird it would be a hummingbird, because neither know how to much relax, they are almost always on the move. 

Land Girl got to feeding the chipmunk, hunks of carrot, strawberry, and even melon. It appears it did not like the strawberry as much as the other food since it took a few times for it to decide to retrieve it and smuggle some away. I bet they would have liked some peanuts. 

Geographer Yi-Fu Tuan once wrote that space becomes place when we endow it with value. Well, my wife endows our home, a place, with dislike for the critters when they eat or dig up the flowers and vegetables, but has a different set of values when in the wild, like at the campground. In that sense, critters are like a dandelion, they produce a yellow flower, but are often detested in a suburban yard. It is all a matter of geography which plays a role in how we endow a space with value.