Breaking garden news! The crime spree has ended thanks to this sweet net situation I rigged up.
A friend suggested that my vegetable predator could very well be birds (instead of or in addition to rabbits), and seeing as how that stray cat had turned the bed into its litter box (I scooped out the very foul evidence of at least four visits), I decided to fully enclose the garden to protect against all comers.
I picked up this Dalen Bird-X netting, which is really fine – so thin that it’s actually hard to photograph – and really strong.
The four posts in the middle to which the net is stapled are loose in the PVC sleeves so that I’m able to easily remove them. The net is simply draped over the two posts on either end and then stapled to a loose piece of wood to weight it down a bit. I also used a few garden staples along the sides to pin the net into the dirt. It’s been in place for a week now and I’m really happy with the solution.
This set up means it’s pretty easy for me to access the garden bed but very difficult for urban wildlife to do the same, which is good because as I was outside taking these pictures for you folks, I saw a rat saunter across the yard…
… or what I thought was a rat. Eventually I realized that it didn’t move like a rat – I’ve never seen a rat high-step like this.
It’s a baby possum!
It was pretty adorable, as far as alley animals go. It didn’t like that I was following it and kept wheeling around to do an open-mouthed hiss at me, but it was so young that it couldn’t even make a noise.
Eventually s/he moved on down the line and slipped under a crack into my neighbor’s garage.
See ya later, buddy.
Project Palermo 