Tag: Animal Tale

It was an epiphany.

On an autumn morning, I stood at the kitchen sink at our house in Blowing Rock, rinsing dishes, gazing absently out the kitchen window. Then, in single file just feet from the window — one, two, three, four, five, six whitetail bucks ambled past!

Their summer red coats were sleek, their thick racks wide and covered in velvet. At the corner of the house, each buck turned downhill to follow the N.C. native plant garden I’d been working on for years. And yes, I guess it was now officially a wildlife corridor.

I’d never seen a party of bachelor bucks so numerous, yet here they were, not more than the length of a football field from Main Street. What validation for a project! 

Season upon season, I’d hacked away at non-native invasive plants such as stiltgrass, Japanese knotweed, creeping Charlie, English ivy and other menaces. My intent was to make space along a shaded woods’ edge, thanks to a magnificent white oak, for natives such as marginal wood ferns, Christmas ferns, Jack-in-the-pulpits, wood asters and snakeroot.

I’d also planted Fraser firs, redbuds, hybrid chestnut trees, winterberries, oakleaf hydrangeas, rhododendrons and fire azaleas. Plus, I had nourished goldenrods and planted cone flowers. My beds of mountain mint were flourishing.

There’d been setbacks, of course. The deer had gobbled every black-eyed Susan I’d planted down to the ground. Likewise for Solomon’s seal. They’d treated the purple asters and Stoke’s asters like a salad bar. They’d virtually extinguished the big patch of jewelweed that had been the foundation of the native garden. And they browsed the lower branches of the chestnuts and winterberries at every opportunity.

Still, I felt successful. Over time, birds and pollinators began to grow more plentiful and varied. Red squirrels, bluejays and crows feasted on white oak acorns. A black bear decided to dig up and dine on a yellow jackets’ nest in my bed of cranesbill. From our back deck overlooking the corridor, I’d watched a mother raccoon lumber by — two kits in tow.

Previously, I’d never seen more than a pair of bachelor bucks hanging together in our neighborhood. Now I was hosting a party of six.

Even wildlife biologists are a little hazy in explaining why buck deer gather in groups prior to the mating season.

But what happens is clear. While the bucks’ antlers are sheathed in velvet and before their hormones start to rage, they work out a hierarchy among themselves through minor scuffles and intimidation, establishing who’s alpha buck — and who’s not.

That’s a real survival advantage. Because when those hormones churn and the bucks’ aggressions rise, they scrub off the antler velvet to expose hardened, sharp points that can inflict serious, even fatal injuries in a fight.

If you’re an experienced gardener or if you’ve seen any one of the après bachelor party films in The Hangover movie trilogy, you know what happens next.

For a bachelor buck deer, there is no better antler scrubber or faux jousting partner than a lithe, healthy sapling. And my six bachelors threw quite the party. Thankfully, Mike Tyson’s tiger wasn’t invited.

I returned to the house a week later to find that one chestnut’s trunk was girdled. Two redbuds had broken limbs and deep gashes in their trunks. A third redbud looked like it had been run through a wood chipper.

So, belatedly, I bought metal posts and chicken wire to make baskets that would protect all the saplings. The girdled chestnut and the shattered redbud I sawed off nearly at ground level, below the damaged bark. Redbuds are tough. I expect they’ll sprout and I’m hopeful the chestnut will, too. I was sorry to lose all that growth, though. The chestnut had stood a good 10 feet tall.

Now all the saplings and stumps are nestled securely behind wire.

What happens at a Vegas bachelor party stays at a Vegas bachelor party.

And I certainly can’t blame the bucks.

Another gardening lesson learned.  OH

Ross Howell Jr. is a contributing writer.