Foodgoat declares war! And seeks revenge

Our interlude of quiet has been shattered. A vile and cruel act has devestated the peace of this short era of bloglessness, a vandal has set upon the happy kingdom of Foodgoat. The victims were many, and they were not yet in the prime of their lives: they were still green and their glorious futures were still before them. We are mourning their untimely loss and the grief is yet too near.

A moment of silence, please, for our tomatoes.

Our tomato plants, the first things we planted, grew tall and produced much fruit. We watched the small green things grow and grow, until they were heavy, until they weighed down the plants and we had to tie them up. We saw that this week, this week with its heat and its sun, would finally take the tomatoes into red ripeness. And after so many weeks and months of waiting, we would have our own crop of fresh, home-grown tomatoes. Oh, how Foodgoat looked forward to them! A supermarket tomato, bland and hard and artificially ripened, is no comparison at all to a homegrown, organic, fresh off the vine, sun-ripened tomato bursting with flavor. Foodgoat had so many plans.

And then Sunday morning, we awoke to find ... the big, almost-ripe, as big as your hand tomatoes ... gone! Nowhere to be seen! Just a sad stem where they once hung. Some heartless vandals, specifically, some trespassing deer had eaten them all.

They had also chewed both my new elderberry trees down to stems.

Grrrrr!

But the tomatoes .... GRRRRRRRRRR!

Deer prowl the neighborhood because the creek that runs by our house leads into a park. Few of the neighbors have a fence in the backyard. Since the tomato tragedy, Foodgoat and Sienna have chased the deer (at one point separating a mama deer from her fawn), thrown sticks at deer, and ran after deer with a hatchet. My aunt has suggested we kill the deer and make a jerky, but I believe you need a license for that.