tomato crazed deer attack

In the early, dark morning hours of Sunday, August 20, 2017, Terry and Noah were awoken by some sort of loud crashing noise in the backyard. Terry said he thought it was one of the kids awake and running into something in the dark. Then he thought perhaps it was a deer, while Noah was just freaked out. When Terry got up later that morning for church and looked out the window, he saw that our back yard was a mess and there was some kind of plant under our apple tree. He went out to investigate and discovered that our blooming cherry tomato plant had been uprooted and tossed under the apple tree. 

The tomato plant had been completely uprooted!! 

So our tomato had survived the huge hail storm we had six days before only to be completely taken out by a dumb deer. You can see the big thriving tomato plant behind Evie. It's the bushy plant behind the deck tub and heat pump, next to  the house. I think it was the day before that we had finally thrown all the fallen apples into the National Guard field behind our house before we mowed the lawn. Perhaps the deer were drunk on fermented apples and that's why they acted to crazy. Or maybe the apples gave them a taste for more and they were bold enough to come sniff around our garden. Or maybe it's due to the drought. Who knows. 

There were leaves and green tomatoes spread all over the yard from the raised bed by the house, all the way towards the back fence where the National Guard land starts.

There's the tomato plant under that tree. Terry followed the debris trail and it led him to the fence. There were green tomatoes and hoof prints everywhere plus the fence was dented and knocked over a little! What we think happened was that a deer had been nosing in at the lowest part of the tomato plant and got its antlers stuck in the metal fencing Terry had placed around it for support. Noticing he was stuck, it then went thrashing around the yard in an attempt to get the plant and supports off his head. Then he ran into the fence and presumably, that sound is what the guys heard. 

After church Terry replanted tomato plant and surprisingly, it has new growth on it now, though most of the tomatoes quit growing and just started ripening. The rest of the grounded tomatoes we collected and let ripen in a box inside.

Here's some of the debris trail leading away from the garden.

This is one the larger more obvious hoof prints visible in the yard. 

Crazy right?! There was a lot of these but they were harder to see later on.

Here is the back fence that's leaning back too far and is bowed out in the middle. See it?

You can see the bowed out portion sticking out here.

The nearest fence post is knocked loose, whereas before you couldn't pull it back like this.

What was even more interesting was the fence next to Noah's bedroom's was also hit! The metal support was stuck here, the post was also knocked loose, and the fence is leaning away. 

Further on was yet another tomato support stuck in the neighbor's fence! So now we're not quite sure if there were two deer or if it was just one who hit both fences. Either way, I'm sure we could have won $100,000 from America's Funniest Videos if we had had a game camera recording. I sure wish I could have seen what that deer looked like. It would have been hilarious! We thought of remaking it with Terry as the deer. 

After Terry replanted the tomato plant we set up a defense to scare any more deer away in the night. We've never ever had problems with deer since we moved here five years ago, despite the fact that they walk the fence line every night. We think Snap, and now Luna, keep them out of the yard. We didn't want to take any chances for a while though so Terry set up the Star Trek motion sensor door chime I gave him for his birthday two years ago. Ha ha ha!