Respect the Bunny!

Nice, Wayfarer. Funny. I actually love Bugs Bunny. I used to watch the cartoon all the time when I was a kid.

But if you're worrying about me killing the bunnies, you don't have to worry. I love animals and would never do anything to hurt them. All I'm trying to do is figure out a way to deter them from eating the vegetables in my garden.

If you're not a vegetarian, I think you could repel them by sprinkling urine around near the fence.  They make a fox urine repellent called "Shake Away," but you might get by just eating a hamburger the day before.

Lay off the asparagus, though...

Get a dog, maybe?

Why can't you just put chicken wire around the garden area?

And if anyone thinks my suggestion is funny, I'll tell ya, I've never had a garden and never had to worry about rabbits so..

I KNOW NOTHING!

Contact the Ag Department for ideas.

Robin,   My family has been doing the garden thing for over 40 years.  We've never had bunny trouble.  Squirrels and birds yes but not bunnies.  Some people have deterred furry pests by putting bright objects in their fruit trees.  Maybe you could hang bright items in your garden.  One thing I have seen used is obsolete CDs.  You know like the ones AOL and earthlink  were always mailing out.   If you know anyone who eats Doritos or Kellogg's Corn Pops you could obtain the empty bags and cut them into about 1 to 2 inch wide strips and then attach the strips to stakes in your garden.  These bags are shiny silver and as the strips flutter in the wind it might help scare away the bunnies.  Another technique I heard about is getting fake plastic owls or big fake plastic snakes and placing them in or near the garden.   I've seen the fake owls on the top of billboards as a pigeon deterrent but I don't have any idea if this works.  You could try making a scare bunny you know like a scare crow.   If you know anyone who grooms dogs maybe you could ask them to save you the clippings and you could put dog hair on the ground around your plants to scare away the critters.  Your success kind of depends on how brave these bunnies are and what their learning curve is.  Do they come at night or in the daytime?  Have you seen the Movie Old Yeller?   There is a scene in the movie where Travis and Yeller spend the night in the corn field to scare away the raccoons.  If you guys get desperate you could always stand guard at night.  LOL

Just five words, "Trap them and cook them".

Where is OldBlue when you need him? I was in such a rush to shower and get to the farmers market yesterday that I made a hideous misspelling at the end of my blog post and he didn't even harass me for it. He must not have cared for my blog post at all.

Random, I'm not quite following on the suggestion. I don't get it. I have heard about the fox urine suggestion. May be expensive, which is not what I want. But if it comes down to it, you never know what we'll have to do. What's with the vegetarian thing? I'm not allowed to be a vegetarian under my parents' roof, but I don't eat much meat. What? Eating hamburger? I'm really lost. I actually don't like hamburger, but the rest of the family does.

WESLEYSMOMMY, I have a chihuahua, but he hasn't slept outside once since we got him five years ago. A dog sleeping outside? That's just crazy...ha ha. My parents definitely don't want another dog, so that's not going to happen -- especially after discovering our newborn calf two days ago. Just another mouth to feed. Plus, our garden is outside the backyard and I wouldn't want my dog to crawl under a fence and escape because he wasn't in the backyard.

Bakonative, putting up a chicken wire fence is actually the most popular solution to bunnies in the garden. I have read it all over the Internet. We will wind up putting up a fence eventually, but I don't think either of us have the time to do it just yet. You have to bury the wire far below the dirt, though, because bunnies are more likely to dig under the fence than jump over it.

Thanks for the suggestion, Audrey. I may do that.

Sys_Mom, those are all great ideas. I've read them all on the Internet already and may try them. Our garden is more small plants than trees, but the other day we discovered the squirrels are climbing our fruit trees and stealing the fruit, so we will definitely have to find some way to deter the squirrels from the fruit. My dad would probably not allow me to stand guard in my own garden, so I don't see that one happening.

robin, you silly wabbit. I am trying to become a kinder, more understanding person. Just don't get on my sh** list. :)

I understand, OldBlue. I don't want people to think of me as the crazy teenage girl who complains about spelling and grammatical errors on people's comments, so I stopped correcting them long ago. I got tired of being that girl. As long as I can understand what they're saying, I don't mind it too much. It irked me at first that you were doing it to other people, but you and I don't seem to disagree much now, do we?

robin, your write.

Robin, The meat eating suggestions from Random have to do with the way our bodies process our inputs into outputs.  Our inputs influence the essence of our outputs.  If we eat meat our urine will smell of meat.  The bunnies will think of us as meat eaters.  They might confuse us with faster four legged meat eaters. How was that for explaining something delicately?