Apologies to anyone interested in poker who reads this blog. This post is not about poker. It’s about RABBITS!
Most of you probably have no idea why I would write about rabbits and are thinking that I’m nuts and you are at least partially correct. If you live in North Las Vegas, however, you know what I’m talking about.
When you come from New York, after having lived most of your life there, when spring arrives (by the way that starts in February here in LV!), you crave color. Spring colors! The best way to satisfy this craving is to plant flowers. That’s what we did in New York anyway – pansies, impatiens, geraniums, begonias, and a slew of other varieties that yield the pinks, yellows, reds, and purples that soothe us and make us feel nurtured and mostly allow us to forget the snow, ice and frigid weather of winter.
For our furry friends in North Las Vegas pansies, impatiens, geraniums, and begonias translate to SALAD! As fast as you can plant any kind of flower, the rabbits proceed to nibble them, clip them, and ultimately devour them. Putting the flowers in pots sometimes helps but if the rabbits are interested enough they will literally jump right into the pots. Fencing of all kinds, decorative fencing, chicken wire, and other barriers seem like an option but unless you are covering the flowers entirely – sides AND top (which actually hides them from view defeating the purpose for which they were planted originally!) – the rabbits will win out.
Right about now you are probably formulating a variety of solutions in your own mind since you feel I am too aggravated, annoyed, and dumb to figure this out myself. Believe me, I have thought of everything.
What about really tall containers, big flower pots that are 3 or 4 feet off the ground? They do work at keeping the rabbits out. They do not work keeping out their partners in crime – the quail army! Back in New York I thought quail were tiny little chicken-like birds that were raised on farms to feed really rich people who like exotic, gamey food just because no one else can afford it. I was wrong! Quail are wild animals that live in North Las Vegas. They live in my neighborhood in droves, or bevies, or flocks, or pods or whatever you call large assemblages of quail.
Quails also like flowers and although they do not soar like eagles or float on wind currents like hawks, they do fly, sort of. They fly high enough to get into those 3 or 4 foot flower pots if there isn’t enough vegetation at ground level for them to forage. Unlike the rabbits who regularly consume buds, petals, stems and leaves, the quail are snippers.
They mostly just snip things (buds, petals, stems, and leaves) off and leave them to rot at the base of the plants.
Sprays, ointments, and other potions that line the shelves of your local garden center reliably kill the plants they are sprayed on in my experience or just turn them brown and icky – bad for the beautiful flowers and bad for the rabbits and quail and still no colors to enjoy.
In spite of all human efforts to defend against these creatures nature’s own solutions are probably the best. So, for every rabbit and quail that demolishes a garden, nature has provided an adequate number of coyotes, owls, and roadrunners. And although this is comforting there seems to be some negative balance at work here (at least where I am concerned) since the predators require their prey to be fat and healthy enough to want to eat and that’s where we humans and our Home Depot purchased flowering plants come in.
Nature! Don’t you love it!
Cards, Dice and Wheels of Fortune 