Nene Attack

 One December day two nene showed up at the garden. Then two more. Two marvelous pair of nene. We thought how blessed we were, how blessed was the garden. Oh brother, we were soon the discovered that we were cursed, not blessed! 

At first the nene grazed the grasses and weeds. I was tickled to think that they were helping us weed. Natural weed control, wow! But then I noticed they had decimated the romaine lettuce. They next moved to the young pea plants, plucking every leaf. Returning to the lettuce rows, the trimmed the leaf lettuce. Then they discovered the young onions, trimming them back too. 

The tops of the onions were nibbled off.

Young pea planted totally ruined. 

All the while the nene were consuming the garden, we tried is get them to leave. Our hands were virtually tied, since with them being an endangered species, we were not allowed to attack, harm, or harass them. So we tried spraying the crops with soapy water….they still ate them. We tried spraying a solution of meat broth…..they still ate the crops. We tried sloshing bucketfuls of rotting meat scraps along the rows. No change. We tried fluttering ribbons, twirling cd disks, bird chasing tape. We resorted to walking in their direction and discovered that we could get up to 6 feet from them before they would turn and walk away. When we stopped, they simply walked right back to the garden. And of course when nobody was around, they had free rein of the garden to eat as they pleased. Out of desperation we purchased garden cloth and covered all the crops that the nene preferred eating. 

We ended up covering 10 rows with garden cloth. 

Then we noticed something. When the volunteer gardeners brought their dogs with them, the nene kept their distance. Seeing the nene being suspicious of them, the dogs responded by being suspicious of the nene. It wasn’t long before the dogs got bolder with the nene and went to check them out every day, resulting in the nene flying off a distance. After a week or so of this, both pair of nene decided that our free buffet was no longer a nice place to dine. They both left for quieter dining elsewhere. And we haven’t seen them since.