Or at least a bunny hater, that is. I do not love mosquitoes either, but that's another story.

A year ago, the ground was covered with thick snow, and the hare went and ate the tips of even the tallest of bushes, but left the bases of tree trunks intact, simply because the plants were protected by the snow. This year, there has not been any snow. The ground is bare, and even though it's not even mid March, plants are emerging from the ground.

One would imagine, that the forest is full of green stuff for the hare to eat, but apparently those little beasts think that my yard is some sort of a gourmet buffet for bunnies. One night I even caught the brown european hare "red-handed" eating my cherry tree. I just happened to wake up in the middle of the night, looked out through the window, and there it was. Eating my tree at my front yard.

I tried knocking the window with my fist to call its attention, and yes, the hare noticed me. It raised its face a little and paused munching. Then it realised I was indoors and went back to eating. So I went out on the porch and yelled at it. First it didn't even move. I yelled some more, and it hopped next to the lilac bushes growing by my yard and stayed there. I got really frustrated looking for something to throw at the hare, but couldn't think of anything suitable. I closed the porch door, opened it again, and shouted at the animal: " Go on, go away, I DO see you there!" Well, the hare heard me and decided to move to a quieter location at my neighbour's yard. I guess it finally understood that I would not let it eat in peace.

But what makes me sad, is that the hare has eaten almost all of the trees and bushes I have, except of those few I protected with fencing in the autumn before winter. I thought there would be snow in the winter  - as there usually is -  to protect the smaller plants. Not quite correct. As a result, the hare has eaten my rose seedlings, my crabapple saplings, my azaleas, Clematis, blueberry plants, magnolias, cherry trees, plum trees, Vitis vine, honey berry bushes, you name it.

This is a crabapple sapling that has been completely eaten. The branches have been cut by sharp teeth and the bark has been eaten too. The latter might have happened with some help from a small rodent. 

The hare has eaten even the smaller saplings I still had growing in a pot on my porch. It seems to love all kinds of plant containers as there is bunny poo in every planting box and pot on my porch. 

So today I decided to protect the rest of the saplings that still had something to save, which mostly means short stubs located here and there on my yard. 

Since the plants are pretty small, I bought some narrow fencing material. And as I expect the hare to try and eat the rest of the plants entering the fencing from the top, I tried to make it more difficult by adding some netting I made of a sturdy string. I'm not even sure if that will discourage the hare at all, but I surely hope it will.

Sadly, I think this won't be enough. As the spring plants have started emerging, it will simply shift to eating up all my tulips. That's what happened last year, and I can't think of a way to prevent that from happening again. 

They are so soft, furry and cute, especially at Easter time when they hop around hiding coloured eggs everywhere. And they are delicious too. We don't have any wild rabbits in northern Finland (although there are some around Helsinki area), so the bunnies I'm talking about are either mountain hare Lepus timidus (we call it "forest hare" probably because it lives in the forest and there aren't any mountains around here) or brown hare Lepus europaeus. The latter is much bigger and it doesn't usually chance its colour for winter like the mountain hare. It's also more an invasive species here up north.

The reason why I don't know which I'm actually talking about is, that I haven't really seen the animal itself, but the tracks it has been leaving all around my yard. And as I'm neither a hunter nor a good tracker, I can't really tell the species by its tracks. I just know it's a hare and that's all.

Don't get me wrong, I actually like the hare. Last winter when no-one had introduced the idea of NOT feeding birds around this building, I had a bird feeder on my yard. The hare came to eat some nuts at night as well, when there was nobody watching. Now that it's prohibited to feed animals here, the hare came to eat my trees and shrubs instead.

I did realise this would happen, and I bought some wire netting that I successfully installed around two of the trees in autumn. Yes, only two. Because the wire netting was really heavy, wanting to roll back to its original rolled position and because I was doing the job all by myself. I was exhausted after the two trees and only covered the trunks of the rest with a plastic roll. "Trunk" doesn't really describe that feature well though, as my trees are still really small, and their trunks are more like twigs.

I have crabapples, an apple tree, some cherry trees and cherry shrubs and two plum trees. Only two of the trees now have a wire netting around them. As it has been snowing, the plastic roll doesn't really protect any part of the rest of the trees, as the surface of the snow is already above that level. So when the hare come to feast on my trees, there's not much if any protection for the tree. They have been eating some branches and the main trunk itself above the plastic roll.

Some branches have disappeared completely, but the trunks have been peeled. Last year I read in a garden magazine, that this could possibly be fixed by wrapping some plastic wrap around the area where the bite marks are. This way the tree could mend itself and grow new bark. Of course the protective plastic foil should be placed as soon as the damage has been done, in order to prevent the area from drying out. When spring arrives and the sunshine starts warming the trunk, it will start re-growing the bark. This is why it has to be clear plastic wrapping, as the sun light has to be able to penetrate it. This is exactly what I did, and now it remains to be seen if it works or not. If you try the same trick, please tell me how did it go.

'Hopa' with plastic wrap taped around its main branch.

I also acquired some birch tar oil from my mother and daubed it around the trunks, branches and the poles supporting the trees. There are different types of this product, used as a "pesticide" or rather as a medium to keep the pests away. There's one for snails and one for mammals. I hope this works against rodents as well.

I'm not sure if there's any fail proof way to protect the trees against rodents. The animals I would be talking about are european water vole Arvicola amphibius as the worst of them and some smaller species of the same kind. They don't just chew some branches, but peel the trunk around the base or chew up the roots. In spring you can lift up the whole tree and see that the roots are gone. Some say that the snow around the base should be treaded so that it becomes compressed and the rodents can't make their paths through it any more. I haven't done that, so I hope there aren't any hungry voles around. And if there are, I hope that the birch tar oil works on them.