We have a problem in the garden. Over the coarse of the last week, I started noticing zucchini and summer squash either missing or half eaten. I first noticed it one night while LuLu and I were out burning off a little extra energy. LuLu loves to pick the summer squash, so she made a beeline from the house to the garden. When we got there we noticed three or four half eaten summer squash on the vine and a couple zucchini that were also chewed up – this was way too much damage for the Cucumber Beetles.

A Half Eaten Zucchini

The garden is in the far north east corner of our property and is bordered on both the north and east sides by corn fields, so it wouldn’t take much for a raccoon or skunk to slip into the garden at night undetected. There were two summer squash that were untouched at that point that were just a day or two away from picking, so I told LuLu we’d have to come back and check on the squash the next night – the next night those two squash were gone.

I figured we’d lose a little produce to the wildlife around here. Even if we lost a 1/3 of the squash and zucchini to whatever critter was stealing it wasn’t nearly as bad as fighting the crazy squirrels and bold rabbits we had when living in town. But, I didn’t plan on being double crossed by the one animal I thought was helping us.

I started growing suspicious when I noticed some scratch marks showing up on a couple of the kiddos pumpkins. We all know how closely Pip -the guard dog- watches that patch for any activity.

My suspicions were confirmed this yesterday.

Caught!

No Guilty Conscience Here

So it turns out I was double crossed by my own security system. But don’t worry, apparently karma hold true for dogs, too. I was greeted at the front door this morning by Pip… and her fresh coat of skunk spray.