The Best Defense

Fence ownership is amazing—I go away for the weekend and when I return my flowers are still booming, my new trees are still treeing and haven’t been reduced to shrubs—or worse—stubs; even my lawn doesn’t look all raggedy and elk-eaten.

I came around the corner the other morning to find a little forked horn—a deer, not an elk-- still in velvet, gazing forlornly into an Eden he could never enter. I laughed and let him be.

While I have no proof that elk have encountered the fence—which is good in, the sense that they haven’t gotten tangled up in it—I have, however, discovered evidence that they have been in the area.

And by “discovered evidence” I mean they’ve eaten and shredded every plant not inside the fence and stomped with their big demon feet all over my unfenced front flower bed. They’ve even eaten plants that in previous years they had walked right by. Back then, I suppose, their thoughts were something like “why stop at McDonald’s when you’re on your way to some Michelin star-worthy gourmet dining?” Now they are either motivated by revenge— “Stomp that lily, pull up that moss rose—HOW DARE SHE TWART US?!!” or are driven mad by the smell of all the delicious petunias they can never have and are forced to chew on some second-rate evening primroses; a forlorn group of Moses, fated to forever gaze into the Promised Land but never enter it.

I will admit that when I discovered the elk damage to the unfenced portions of my yard, I did not react with the casual “oh well” acceptance I had assumed I would muster. After all, I had made a Faustian bargain of sorts with the Universe---“Just let me have these plants here in the backyard and the elk can have the rest of my property to plunder.” I was a little peeved, but soon recovered my equanimity. 

Mostly.