Reindeer and varmints

Terry’s winter project for the last two years has been making eight not-so-tiny reindeer. He’s never been one to spend time in quiet contemplation. He needs to stay busy. Two of the reindeer are posted on either side of the garage. Terry has their feet on boards that are weighted down with bricks. Nevertheless, they keep blowing over in the 70 mph winds. Terry puts them back together and stands them up again. Hope springs eternal.

The other six are on the south lawn. At least they don’t break when they hit the grass.

Reindeer on the south side of the house

 One of them is different from the others. Terry does not like to waste scraps and uses them for embellishments of his own design. “Why does one of the reindeer have antlers on his butt?” I asked.

Comet, en flambe

“That’s Comet,” Terry replied. As if that explained everything.

“Those are flames,” he added. Ditto.

“Green flames,” I said.

“Yeah!” The tone here implied that everyone knows that.

“Coming out of his butt,” I said.

“Yeah!” Ditto.

In all of the variations of the Santa mythology, I do not recall anything about Comet having green (or any other color) flames coming out of his butt. However, I have learned that when Terry comes up with this stuff, it is often better to smile and nod.

In other news, I went out to harvest carrots from the high tunnel this week and noticed that some damned varmint had been there before me. This carrot did not grow this way.

Stumpy

I don’t know what varmint it could be. Mice and voles were my first suspects. They don’t hibernate. I have seen their tunnels all over under the snow. There wasn’t a whole lot of damage, so that would be consistent with a small animal. However, there was a whole lot of dirt excavated from the bed, which suggests something larger. I have not seen any 13-striped ground squirrels recently, but we haven’t had the consistently cold weather that would cause them to settle in for their long winter nap.

All of the black soil outside of the raised bed was excavated underneath the board.

The next day, there was even more damage. My carrots! My beautiful carrots!

Top chewed off a carrot

And another one

I could harvest all the remaining carrots and refrigerate them. I hate to do that, though, because they will keep better in the ground. It seemed that the varmints are coming in under the side of the high tunnel. Terry filled the gap with sand, which won’t prevent them from getting in, but will at least tell us where they’re tunneling. It’s always something. There was no further damage between yesterday and today. I’ll just wait and watch. Damned varmints!