You know things are bad when even Reginald Montgomery “Chuckie” Hogbottom, Order of the Woodchuck, Recipient of the medal of honor “Marmota Monax” September 2019, Groundhog Knight of the Realm, May 2022, and Recipient of the Order of the Garter July 2023 is MIFFED.

To explain Chuckie’s distress, let us recap this season in our vegetable garden. Despite an 8 foot fence circling the perimeter, deer and groundhogs have frollicked so thoroughly in the inner sanctum of this garden that little is left but Hollyhocks and Nasturtiums (well sprayed with garlic spray) and an onion crop. There might be more if us humans liked garlic sprayed vegetables, but we don’t.

Any time a grandchild visits the first thing we do is go down and fill in the groundhog hole in the CENTER of the vegetable garden. Several hours later, it is a sure bet we can go fill it in again. The groundhogs shamelessly redig the hole as often as we fill it in. It is fair to say that until last night Chuckie and co. were getting the last laugh about everything to do with the vegetable garden.

However, this morning when I went down to begin to mulch over sections of the “garden” with mulch hay, it was hard to miss that the damage had escalated. In fact, the eight foot fence had been destroyed on three sides of the garden. Lizzie was with me as we surveyed the scene. There were metal fence posts bent to the ground as well as sections of heavy duty fencing droooping on the ground. This seemed a little much for a Groundhog celebration or for that matter a gala event with the Deer community. Even the deer prefer sailing over the fence versus destroying it.

This week Lizzie has run into so many bears on her early morning woods walks that the whole office crew has been reading the bear section in Animal Speak while simultaneously scratching our heads in wonder. So it was only right that Lizzie found the smoking gun, I mean steaming bear poop left as a memento to commemorate whatever bear activity occurred last night in the vegetable garden.

While this intruder has Chuckie and co. annoyed, I really feel the most sorry for the bear which must have found NOTHING tasty in the garden. As in truly NOTHING! Chuckie and co. are not known for their sharing skills, and they have truly left nothing for anyone or anything else to nibble on.

Needless to say we await the arrival of the man we have hired to build us a serious garden fence with bated breath. Good news for him is that now there is virtually nothing for him to dismantle and no planmts for him to worry about damaging as he sets to work to build what we now hope will be a Groundhog, Deer and Bear proof fence!

All I can say as I close this post is THANK GOODNESS FOR THE LOCAL FARM STAND! Oh and the picture I took of the poop? I will spare you the photo but may share it with the under seven set of grandchildren who do like a bit of poop talk.