Beginner Gardening: Rabbit obstacle courses and other critter tales, 1 by TucsonJen

TucsonJen wrote:
I live in the desert where the critters will eat plastic chairs if nothing else is available. OK, maybe I exaggerate but I've lost dozens of cactus to the hungry things. Sure it's cute to see a 20 cottontails lazing around in the grass in the morning - and it'd be fine if they stayed on the grass but noooooo. That's just the appetizer. They move on to Asparagus Ferns, Purple Hearts, and any tender plant. Then, as if to show off their toughness, they chomp down on new cactus pads, agave leaves, and things that surely must have stabbed them royally during their meal. Juicy succulents I can understand but Desert Spoon? Spanish Bayonet? Cholla? Cwazy wabbits! The ground squirrels (also cute and oh-so destructive) do their share but it is the rabbits that consume the most.

DH doesn't garden and lacked motivation to help me in my critter wars.... until he stepped on "rabbit presents" one day. Then he started noticing just how much fertilizer we were getting out of our furry friends and that got him going.

We have mostly wrought iron fencing that sits on top of a low retaining wall. DH bought screen - the kind used in security screen doors - and screwed it in to the back of the fence. Then he lined the bottom with concrete edging pavers in the space outside the fence on top of the retaining wall so that the critters wouldn't push their way under. The drop off from the grass to the outer desert by the main gate is low but the retaining wall height varies from 1 to four feet - hopefully high enough now with the screen that they won't just hop on over.

We have three gates that needed pavers at the base so that there would be no digging under them. DH dug out spots for the pavers and set them in with no cement. We'll see how well those do!

So are we rabbit-proofed? Wellllll... Not perfectly. There are spots that can be dug under here and there but we're trying to stay on top of it. It may prove to be just a rabbit obstacle course.

Our next task is keeping the javelina out of the courtyard where they wreaked havoc the other day before I barricaded the entrances with boards (quite attractive… not!). DH is in the planning stage of gate building. Oh, and he took the car in today for $2000 worth of pack rat damages.

Critters. Like I don’t have enough trouble keeping my plants alive and DH's blood pressure down. *sigh*

Here's a somewhat lame picture of the fence and one of the gates. You can see (hopefully!) that the screen starts at the ground with the pavers holding them firmly in place. We have a lot of fence and opted not to have the screen go all the way to the top (too costly to buy that much screen). You can't really see the screen unless the light is coming from behind it. The bridge, BTW, is over a wash that is filled with trees and rarely water!