DDS - Getting the Lawn Ready

By I.J. Hudson

Warning!  Do not read further if you have a weak stomach.

It has become a ritual of very early spring – or late winter, depending on temperatures.

Just as some people await the seasons for picking strawberries, blackberries, peaches and apples, I await the perfect time to pick – wait for it – deer droppings in my front yard.  We have a herd of the creatures that traipses around the neighborhood grazing on plants, shrubs, running in front of cars and trucks and leaving their leavings behind. The crop builds until it can no longer be ignored.  You know you’ve reached that point when you can’t walk a continuous straight line across the yard.

Admittedly, the payoff for picking deer droppings is not quite the same as for fruit, but it is exercise and is a much needed chore.  It is preventive in nature in that it diminishes the chances that the small shoes of grandsons will find those deposits of deer scat and transfer them, in smushed form, to the kitchen tile or other interior surfaces – or to their parents’ SUVs.  

I choose February/March as my DDS (deer droppings season) because it often is warm enough to sustain outside activity, yet cool enough that the mostly pelletized material is still hard enough to make handling easier.  If you wait too late in the year, you have to wear gloves.      (Just kidding, I wear gloves.)

It’s fairly easy to pick up, but you do have to use your fingers like a small rake to bring up some of the lower lying “fruit” between the blades of grass.   And I stress some, because you can’t get it all.  Spring rains and grass cuttings assist in reducing the quantity of the morsels you miss.  

I’m sure some of you can/will suggest good uses for the deer droppings.  It may make excellent fertilizer, or a wonderful threaded necklace if properly glazed.  I suspect the latter may already be available online, but I’m thinking that artisan may already have an abundant supply of raw material. 

I do know picking up deer droppings is good exercise that I can recommend to friends who would like to stop by next season.  There is no question the deer will do their part to ensure there is another bumper crop. 

 

Actually, they’re working on it now.