Not so dear deer

Noooo! After nursing my prize Wimberley like oak along for several years, on a recent visit I discovered that a deer was more fond of it than I would have preferred. Deer love to rub their racks on succulent young trees for some reason, but I didn't think they'd go after MY little tree because it has guy ropes around it. The first photo shows what the deer did, and somehow he managed to do that pretty much all the way around the trunk, guy ropes be damned.

After going through several steps of the grieving process, including thoughts of a horrible death for the offending deer, I set about addressing the immediate problem as any true geek would. I the wrapped the injury with some special high-tech stuff to keep it from drying out (AKA duct tape), then tied a bunch of protective sticks around the base to keep Bambi away in the future, as seen in the second photo.

After all of my work to get this one little tree into adulthood, it seems to me that the chances of any one tree making it in the wild must be about one in a zillion. Hopefully the next time I write about this tree will years from now, and I'll include a photo showing it throwing lots of shade for my sweetheart and I sitting beneath it, sipping lemonade.