Kenneth D. Schillinger wrote:

So there I was, thinking I was in good shape with my new fence around the
garden. It's 6' tall and graduated mesh starting small at the bottom and
getting bigger as it goes up. I looked in the garden and saw a rabbit which
had me wondering how in the heck it got in. I watched a while, and it went
to the fence, stood on it's hind legs and put it's front legs on the wire.
The rabbit then proceeded to climb about a foot and a half or so higher and
exit through the mesh where it was larger. I honestly had never seen or
heard of a rabbit climbing a fence, and it took me totally by surprise.
Has anyone else seen this happen?
Ken.
Who sadly is planning to either trap and re-locate the rabbits, or if worse
goes to worse will give them lead poisoning. I really don't want to do that.
When I was younger it didn't bother me, but now I just don't want to kill
anything.


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That's one smart rabbit! I know where you are coming from. We have a
healthy wild rabbit population and I don't like the idea of fencing.
Mothballs scattered around the perimeter of the garden help keep them
out of your garden. If you can't tolerate the smell of mothballs a
motion activated sprayer is a great deterrant. CritterRidder is a
product you can use that lasts 30 days even in rain and it has no smell.
A cheaper solution is a cayenne pepper/powdered pepper mix but I don't
like to use that because it does harm the animal. Check for and remove
other souces of food such as bird feeders. I have 3 bird feeders, one
filled with a corn mix. The starlings discovered it so there was a mess
under the feeder. I didn't think much about it until I had to chase 2
wild rabbits out from under it. Obviously they like corn! I
temporarily changed the seed to niger seed to discourage the starlings
and rabbits. So far that approach has works but niger seed is expensive
so I'm going to try safflower seed. Another trick is to remove hiding
spots like wood piles. Traps are surprisingly ineffective for rabbits
according to our pest removal service. The reason they are ineffective
is the rabbit sees no need to go into the trap when surrounded by a
vegetable buffet A cat is rather effective as are some dogs but that
won't be much help if you don't want a pet. I have raised beds so tried
a 2' high temporay fencing of chicken wire around one bed. It has
been very effective. I don't like the looks of it though so I'm using
methods mentioned above. DH thinks a pellet gun would be effective as
well except I'd likely take out every neighbour and windows for miles
around while the rabbits sat there laughing at me so that isn't an option.

BTW, I know we have a lot of rabbits. We got a late snow and the yard
and gardens were covered with rabbit prints. I posted a picture on my
websites below.

Garden Gnome

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Garden Gnome
http://ca.360.yahoo.com/sfg.oamc
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/garden_wanderings
http://gardengnomewanderings.blogspot.com/