(Betsy Bloom/Daily News photo) Even a difficult-to-reach hanging plant proved too much to resist.

Those who have followed this column probably have figured out I’m a big fan of wildlife.

It’s a thrill to see the abundant animals, large and small, that have wandered into the yard or paddled by just offshore during my almost nine years at Six Mile Lake.

That doesn’t mean they can’t disappoint me at times.

Bears have destroyed bird feeders and suet cages when we forget to bring them in during the spring. Woodpeckers drill holes into the cedar siding on the house. Raccoons drain nectar from the hummingbird feeders. Skunks dig up the lawn for grubs.

But this summer, the deer have been the ones to test my tolerance.

Normally, watching the annual group of local does raise their fawns in the neighborhood, even feeling comfortable enough to bed down in our backyard, is a treat. Usually the herd will also include “teenage” spike and fork bucks.

But unfortunately, the deer this year have developed a taste for what we planted this spring, like no other time in the past.

Sure, we knew enough that when we had a garden, it needed a fence. But the three window boxes on my mom’s quilt shop, the two half-barrels alongside the door to the garden tractor shed, went relatively untouched when filled each late May with petunias, sweet potato vine, alyssum and some type of hanging vine. A rabbit might take a nibble, but that was the worst.

We didn’t do the usual flowers in 2023 due to family circumstances that had us away a fair amount of the summer. So this year, we spent more to really stuff the boxes and half-barrels, though we did cut back to only one hanging planter of petunias by the door to the front porch. The greenhouse advised feeding the plants weekly to keep them blooming through the summer.

For about three weeks, they responded gloriously to that care, new growth spilling over the edges and the vines quickly reaching for the ground. One ivy plant the greenhouse threw in as a bonus became a green waterfall that totally covered half of the window box that can be seen across from the kitchen window. The hanging planter was encased in burgundy red and yellow flowers.

Several times, I meant to take photos to send to the sister-in-law who helped pick out and plant it all. I missed my chance.

One morning, the flowers in the half-barrels were gone, along with the sweet potato vines. Several plants had been pulled completely out, dropped to the ground as a root ball with the tattered remnants of stems.

They then turned to the window boxes, stripping leaves from the vines, again yanking some of the plants out.

In each case, I replanted what was left, kept up with the feedings as they struggled to recover. We took to parking the two SUVs close to the boxes, to discourage the deer from squeezing in.

Through the initial attacks, one box remained unmolested — the one with the ivy vine, now so overgrown little of the wooden box could be seen. It was behind a small picket fence and a dense thicket of daylilies, so perhaps too much of a bother to get to, I thought.

Turns out the deer were just biding their time — or perhaps got offended by my one meager attempt to turn them away from my flowers.

My brother gave me a spray that was supposed to be a deer repellent — rank-smelling stuff I nonetheless spread on the half-barrels and boxes.

While it did seem to discourage them for a few days, they ultimately returned with a vengeance. This time, the box with the ivy vine was the target. The deer chewed almost all of the plants down to the bare dirt. Most of the daylily flowers and first black-eyed susans got munched as well for good measure.

In the end, they’ve been brazen enough that when home on Saturday nights, I’m reduced to going outside and yelling at them to leave the plants alone, as if shooing off a stray dog squatting in the yard. They show no shame in looking at me when caught.

It’s now become a summer of nursing mangled stems still working to put up small leaves, even a flower or two, only to have the deer notice they’re worth a nibble again. This past week, they stripped the last of the flowers on all of the window boxes.

But that wasn’t the worst blow.

For at least a decade or more, we’ve given my mom hanging baskets for Mother’s Day — usually two for the back deck, one for the front entrance. As I said, we only did the one in front this year. In all those years, they’ve gone virtually untouched, seemingly too high up to be worth the effort to reach.

On Aug. 30, I went to water the plants and … well, you can see in the photo.

This hanging basket is over a sizable evergreen bush and alongside the front porch steps. So the deer that did this had to be willing to wade into a bush, perhaps balance on its back legs, and clamber up wooden steps to do the level of damage it inflicted on the plant.

We’re not alone in having deer behaving badly at Six Mile Lake, of course. Our neighbor also lost hanging baskets and all the flowers in the square wooden planters she had alongside her garage doors. They set up a motion sensor that plays sounds of dogs barking and gunfire but still have deer in the yard.

So, what might have triggered the deer to develop such an appetite for destruction?

We’ve fed them for years, and have apple trees mostly for their consumption, so it could be the deer think everything in the yard is open season, said Brian Roell of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. He’s now the large carnivore specialist, but previously had worked closely on the deer population in the Upper Peninsula.

And while the mild winter likely has deer populations up, it only takes one doe deciding the flowers are tasty to target them all, Roell said. Which would explain why past years haven’t been this bad.

He endorsed the recordings of barking dogs and gunfire as a repellent, but had another suggestion: motion- and heat-sensor-activated sprinklers.

“Turns out deer do not like to get squirted,” Roell said.

He has four Orbit Yard Enforcer sprinklers that he purchased online. A quick Google search also turned up some other brands.

It’s meant he gets to have hostas again, “nice hostas,” Roell said.

He’s since bought some for the DNR as well. They can be used to keep bears away from bees, skunks from grubbing up the grass and Canada geese from messing up docks and shorelines, he said.

They are battery powered and can be set with a timer. The first year, they spooked the deer so badly at his home they ran through deer netting at his home, Roell said. As with anything that connects to a hose, they’ll need to be taken out before the first freeze.

He recommends the sprinklers be moved regularly, as the deer will test the perimeters and perhaps determine a path around the sensors. And family members need to remember when moving around the yard, perhaps in early morning or after dark, that the sensor will react to them as well.

It’s too late to consider such an investment this year. But it’s something to think about for next summer, if we decide to give the flowers another try.

Betsy Bloom can be reached at 906-774-2772, ext. 240, or bbloom@ironmountaindailynews.com.