The other day as we hiked home from town, we discovered moose tracks on the trail—lots of them. From the looks of things, we had a crowd of moose crisscrossing the trail most of its length. We’d had a full day in town, and were all tired, but we quickened our pace home, for fear the moose had found our garden.
Strips of used dryer sheets will hopefully keep the moose away from our cherries (Photo: Mark Zeiger).
We’ve never had moose in our garden in the summer—yet. Our fence is only enough to keep porcupines out. An adult moose can step right over the fence without even noticing it. We’ve had them come through in the winter and early spring, they’ve even bedded down overnight in the garden itself, but at that time of year they browse trees, especially our cherry trees. Now that our cherries are ripening, we worried that they might eat some of the fruit.
When we got home, we found everything well. But, to we took steps to ensure that things would remain so.
Michelle surprised us by pulling out a wad of used dryer sheets. We stopped using those years ago, before moving to the homestead. None of us can stand their fragrance anymore. Neither, they say, can moose! She’d been collecting them from the laundromat we sometimes use, just in case a day like this might come. We cut them into strips, grabbed the bucket of clothes pins, and went around the homestead “decorating” for the moose, pinning the strips to the garden fence and the cherry trees.
We haven’t seen any sign of moose since then. Hard to say the strips have worked, but then, it’s hard to say they haven’t, either.