Michael & Liz are Bloggable

Last week after filling the garden with dirt, we started having a problem with one of our dogs going into the garden. You'd be surprised to hear that it's not Daisy, as much as she enjoys blazing new trails on her own. She actually has been really good about obeying the "don't go in the garden law" we've established. Gryffin on the other hand, with his ridiculous jumping ability, does not obey the law very well.

We constantly saw him in the garden the first week. He'd sniff around in it and we constantly were out there picking him up and throwing him out (that's an exaggeration despite how badly I wanted to, more like setting him down outside of it). After several days of this, I again saw him in the garden and he was peering over the wall near the back and was whining and crying at something. In building the garden, we didn't want the soil up against the fence slats because they aren't strong enough, so I built a wall of wood that screwed it into the fence posts. That created a gap between our garden and the fence the width of the post. That space is about 2 or 3 feet deep and big enough to house any kind of rodent or reptile. While scurrying out there I started saying out loud "Please don't be a snake. Please don't be a snake." I'm terrifed of snakes. They don't make sense to me. So when I got to garden to see what he was whining at, low and behold it was



a DIRTY WABBIT! We had fun making Elmer Fudd references during this whole event. Unfortunately after throwing some dirt at it, the rabbit hid behind one of our posts and I couldn't do anything about it.

The next day I went back out to the garden (with Gryffin of course) and started looking around the back and there was no rabbit to be found. I figured it had a hole it goes in and out of, so it must be gone for the day. I looked around for the hole but didn't find anything. I then walked down the fence line towards the house looking in the weeds and grass looking for a hole. I got all the way to the fence door and as I started to open the door, I looked down and the rabbit was standing FROZEN at my feet.

I opened the fence door immediately and he didn't move. I then nudged the rabbit with my shoe toward the door and he wouldn't budge. I did that for an uncomfortable amount of time and the rabbit stayed frozen. The dogs were of course curious to see what was going on and ran over. If the dogs had seen the rabbit before I yelled "SIT! STAY!", this blog post would be called "THE GREAT CHAOS OF 2010". It would have been epic.

I picked the dogs up (before they smelled or saw anything) and put them inside and got a very long stick from the garage as a poking device. The rabbit was unimpressed and remained frozen. I poked him so hard that I got him to roll over a couple times. A few more rolls and he would have been out door, when all of a sudden he took off next to the house and under the deck and started heading down the other side of the fence to the back of the yard. I knew he was trying to get back to his hiding place so I tried cutting the corner. I managed to shove my stick in front of him to thwart his jump to get behind the garden. I wasn't ready for his second jump however, and he retreated to safety.

At that point it was difficult to get the rabbit motivated to move again. He kept hiding and I kept poking. At one point he ran out of the garden, down in front of it, and back into it from the other side.

Liz came home and we generated a new plan. We created a lock system where we'd block the entrance on one side and start to poke him in the other direction. Every time he moves from one post section to another, we'd block him out of the previous section. This system worked like a charm. The rabbit couldn't go backwards and was NOT happy about it. The second he left the garden, he was locked out of it for good. It took a good half hour to get the job done, but once he left the garden it was easy to chase him to the door of the fence to get him out.

Since then we haven't had any critter issues. Hopefully it remains that way and they stay away from our delicious veggies.