Home-grown deer repellent

In this week's Nugget, there's a story about cougars that was generated by e-mails from Ken Ehlers of Sage Meadow, and Betty Fadeley of Aspen Lakes.

In the exchanges we enjoyed, talking about feeding deer on purpose and reluctantly with our landscaping and kitchen gardens, Ken added: "Come to think of it, Jim, we all feed the deer unintentionally by planting stuff like flowers and such that they eat. We have tried our best to plant only stuff they aren't supposed to eat, but we found out the hard way that when hungry, deer will eat about anything."

That very night, around midnight, as if to prove a point, my wife Sue (without my getting even a hint of it) leaped out of bed and ran out to our kitchen garden. When I opened my eyes in the morning, she said, "The deer tried to get into my kitchen garden last night." (I think it's raising three children that gives her that sense of hearing, alert to things that go scrunch in the night...)

After some discussion we decided I should do something about it, so I got out three wide-mouth canning jars and started to fill them with my urine. It only took three days to fill each of them, after which I set them out on the back porch railing to ripen in the sunlight. Boy, did they ever!

If you have purchased any deer repellents you know that most of them smell pretty bad, and cost and arm and a leg. So, why spend all that money and let all that urine go to waste, why not use it to create my own repellent, I thought. I got the bright idea of adding a well-beaten egg to it, and that helped things to get even richer.

Let me tell you, after three days in the sun that stuff will repel anything that has sense of smell. The odor was enough to gag a maggot; even the turkey vultures avoided flying over my place.

Yesterday, Sue came in from watering her kitchen garden with a long face.

"Too late for the pee," she said, "the deer got the broccoli."

Dang! I tried some a little earlier and thought it worked, but I guess that old adage was true for my concoction, "If a little is good, a whole lot would be better."

Holding my nose and being very careful to not get any on my shoes or clothing, I poured a wall of ripe repellent around all the raised beds of our kitchen garden.

"That'll teach 'em!" I muttered, holding the empty jars as far from me as possible.

During our discussion about our home-made deer repellents, Ken added this: "Jim, thanks for the information on your brew to keep deer away. I have read that male urine works, female urine does not. Occasionally I have saved mine in a jar when in the garage, and put some stay stick-um stuff in it as well, so it does not wash off the leaves of the plants, especially the Rhodies in the front yard. Must be the hormones, as it works on the large plant leaves. This is true with the cougar urine as well, it must be male, so no wonder it costs $30 a quart! It smells like it is hot with peppers."

Ken suggested I add hot pepper to the concoction curing on the back porch railing, but I was afraid to do that. The thought of adding jalapeno peppers to that already unstable mass gave me visions of a nuclear explosion.

I'm sure there a great many readers of this column who have made up their own fail-safe, repulsive and horrifying blends to keep deer away. If it works, and it's not too personal or shocking to share, now's the time. Thanks. Send your recipe to [email protected]