In the years we've lived in our home, I've inadvertently created dinner for feral cats by feeding and attracting chipmunks, lured hissing and ferocious raccoons to our porch by feeding the feral cats who I didn't want eating my chipmunk friends, and given my poor house cats a terrible case of fleas by enticing all sorts of wild animals to our yard. Oops. You'd think I would have learned my lesson?
This year, my backyard visitors have amassed to quite an impressive list. We have Chippy 2 (RIP Chippy), a squirrel that is almost cat-sized, Bun Bun, a cardinal couple, a dove couple (who come every year) and other random birds who come and visit my feeders.
The nice thing about birds, chipmunks, squirrels, bunnies, and cardinals is that they all like sunflower seeds. So I've been feeding them all, and not attracting, say, raccoons and feral cats, with the seeds. I thought I'd finally figured out how to strike a balance with the woodland critters.
I also have a love of flowers and have spend grueling hours planting, watering, and fertilizing my blooms. Do you see where this is going? I had a new rose bush I planted this year. A bud appeared and died pretty quickly, and I was super excited to see last weekend that there were two big buds back on my new bush! Huzzah!
I was NOT super excited to check on said new buds two days ago only to realize that Bun Bun ate them. Ate them all, stripped the leaves, left sad, hollow, empty branches in her wake. BUN BUN! I give you seeds and this is how you repay me? Bad Bun Bun. I thought we were tight. : (
Here's Bun Bun:
and here's what's left of my rose bush:
I wish I had taken a before picture of the bush. It was doing pretty well, actually. How was I to know that Bun Bun would betray me so completely? I am not going to go Farmer Bob on her, though. I may, however, invest in some wire fencing.
No comments:
Post a Comment