My Two Cents

I heard a rustling and saw the glint of his eye before he took off running and jumped the fence. The buck had invaded my garden. A couple days earlier, I had found the cat in the garden sitting on some deer droppings, they must have still been warm. I disposed of those and thought it must be a one time thing because I’d never seen any before. Now I knew he was back. Left more droppings too – lucky the cat hadn’t yet taken a seat.

One day last year I heard what I thought were horse hooves out on the road, I opened the gate and a deer turned and stared at me for a second, then took off running. The other two joined her in fleeing. They have worn a path in the wooded land at the end of the street.

People in town have posted about the deer this summer. “They ate my entire garden!” or “My sunflowers have been eaten. All I have now are the stalks.”

A friend on the East Coast installed an 8 foot fence around her property and an additional one around her vegetable garden. I recently heard a deer made it past both and ate her entire garden. Maybe it was more than one deer as she had a large garden.

I knew I had to deter the deer, but how? There were a lot of tips on-line. I took a gallon of vinegar and poured it in front of the raised beds. I shook cinnamon in a semi-circle on the rocks. I ordered reflective pin-wheels.

The pinwheels were of the assemble yourself variety. I sat on the terrace out front for the chore. I thought it would have been a good activity at a 4th grader’s birthday party. Each child could take theirs home. No children were receiving mine – I needed them all. I installed a pinwheel in each corner of the raised beds.

I haven’t seen any sign of a deer in a week but I still have my guard up.

They call them mountain lions here in California. I was surprised to read on NextDoor that one was lounging in someone’s yard – for a half hour – not far from our house. Why didn’t the observer call animal control? In the past 4 1/2 years we’ve lived here, no mountain lions have previously been reported in The Point. It made me laugh at myself. I’d been wondering how my life could be any worse than being confined indoors day after day because of the smoke and it would have been worse if I’d gone on my walk and encountered an unfriendly mountain lion. S/he was lounging by a house in the middle of my walking route.

I am especially wary of mountain lions because I have such a strong attraction to them. I can’t control my wanting to see one in the wild. I sometimes fear this will attract one to me. This, what is it, obsession, started back on the East Coast. I was living in Maine and went to a Shamanic workshop one weekend. It was sponsored by Michael Harner’s Foundation for Shamanic Studies. We were introduced to core shamanism and shamanic journeying. On the last day, Dana, our teacher, asked if anyone would like him to retrieve their “power animal.” He only wanted two volunteers but more than that were interested so he had a private chat with each of us to inquire why we were interested.  I told him I was in chemotherapy for a recurrence of Hodgkin’s disease, stage four this time, and he selected me. I remember only the drumming. Afterwards he told me that my power animal was a mountain lion. I didn’t even know there were any of the animals in the United States, didn’t know they were also called pumas or cougars or panthers. I haven’t had Hodgkin’s disease again. Was that the cure or a contributing factor? How and why do some people heal, recover, and some don’t when they are receiving the same medical treatment? I don’t know.

After we moved to California, it was a surprise to learn that mountain lions are all over the place out here – close by. Each year one or more is spotted on the Lab property in the Berkeley Hills. They put up sandwich board warning signs at all of the entrances. It concerned me in the winter when it was dark well before 5pm. I’d walk down the sidewalk warily to the shuttle stop, relieved to join the group of waiting passengers.

Let me clarify my vision. I would really like to see a mountain lion in the wild when I am in the car with the windows rolled up!