subject: A Threatened Garden By Unwelcome Pets [print this page] Not so long ago the welfare of our garden was threatened. Before acting, we thought it prudent to canvass other gardeners to find out how they hung on to their gardens as well as peace of mind when plagued by unwelcome pets.
What did the Emily Post of good garden manners prescribe for the man whose tulip border had been laid in the dust by someone's playful pup?
"Eat his chickens and turn his prowling cats and dogs over to the dog catcher," bellowed the man who 'rides himself on common sense.
But, must it be a choice between your neighbor and your garden? If this common sense advice were followed, you'd gain an enemy and lose a neighbor. You can't eat his chickens and have his friendship, too.
The first lady I saw was vitriolic. "Strawberries, lily pools and bird-song are preferable to pest-keeping neighbors, anyway, so why worry about telling them off ?" When I offered that it was the animals belonging to them and not the neighbors themselves who were the culprits, she said, "But it's the neighbors who let them run at large. You can't try a dog in court - yet!"
"Neighbors, bah!" I got at my next stop. "Is anyone worthy of the name neighbor who is guilty of turning a cat loose, an un-belled bird-eating cat and all of them are that no matter what the silly cat 'mama' says. They're all natural-born killers and will eat a cardinal or a thrush when they've just gorged themselves on whipping cream."
The man was red-faced, perspiring, scowling, down on his knee working over a riddled pansy bed. I put my question. "Huh !" he said bitterly, "My pansies and my lettuce and my pea vines will probably make their fryers tenderer." He got to his feet and he exploded in my face, "But they're not on relief from me!"
The last little lady, a young mother, was no more gentle than the others. "Just look at my little blue spruce. Ruined! Absolutely ruined ! And their dog's polluted my baby's sand-pile until she can't use it anymore. If you ask what I'm going to do, I can tell you. Shoot him, as sure as I'm alive, the next time he comes back."
But, even would-be shooters of roving pests feel a little sorry. After all, it is the owner, not the pet, who is really to blame by not keeping his animals at home.
