Planting a tree and helping the
environment, for prosperity, for your grandchildren or for whatever reason,
always seems to be a very worthwhile thing to do. Like others thinking in the
same vein, that’s exactly what we have done over the years and it was with
considerable disappointment on inspecting some of them a couple of weeks ago to
find they had been through a torrid time. Lots of chewing and bark removal had occurred
to the poor young saplings: something had to be done. The first job was to find
the culprit. Last Monday I woke up early and down to the plantation I went to
try to catch the tree maimer in the act, or so to speak. After about ten minutes,
a troublesome threesome came into play straight up to the trees and started
their tree damaging work. Muntjacks. I hit
a stick up against the tree I was standing against and they ran off down the
ride. ‘That won’t stop them for long,’ I thought. As I started to walk back, I spotted
them again setting about another unsuspecting young beech. Under more intensive
observation, I noticed the beech and ash were the muntjacks’ favourites, the
oak, chestnut and hawthorn were less to their liking. I was thoroughly stumped
as to what to do. I looked over to the two dogs, Mitch and Shep, laying about
on some old hessian sacking type material – this gave me a marvellous idea.
Mitch and Shep were not best pleased with sharing their bedding. “It is the
middle of summer so a little less bedding will do you no harm, boys,” I
reasoned as Shep gave me a disapproving look. That evening, I ripped the
hessian into strips and wrapped a length around each badly nibbled tree trunk. Thankfully,
the result up to now has been really quite encouraging, whether it the smell of
the dogs the muntjacks don’t care for or the coarse texture of the material. For
whatever reason, they are leaving the saplings in peace and are nibbling the
grass and other flora in between the trees. Much more sensible.
One of England's finest emblems: the oak tree.
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