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Garden in the City: Carnage in the Stalks! The Rats Got My Corn

By Patty Wetli | August 29, 2014 8:40am | Updated on August 29, 2014 7:18pm
 Corn picked clean by rats. Score another point for nature vs. a gardener's nurturing.
Corn picked clean by rats. Score another point for nature vs. a gardener's nurturing.
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DNAinfo/Patty Wetli

LINCOLN SQUARE — Permit me a moment of silence as I mourn the loss of my corn.

(Silence.)

Nope, doesn't make me feel any better.

After nurturing my crop of corn for the last four months — watering and feeding, hugging and cajoling, marveling at every wondrous step of the cobs' development, excited to unwrap each husk like a present on Christmas Day — it comes to this: I was no match for rats.

Patty Wetli explains how emotional gardening can be in the latest episode of "Garden in the City."

Me, I visited my plot sometimes daily, sometimes not. The rats, they lived there. Burrowed under the beds. They would wait me out.

I caught glimpses of them now and then, usually just the last inch or two of their shudder-inducing tails as they scurried out of sight. I convinced myself they were after everyone else's produce.

This last time, as I approached my plot — in broad daylight, I might add — I heard a rustling in the corn and saw the stalks quiver at the tips of their tassels.

Please let it be birds, please let it be birds.

But there was no flutter of wings as the predator emerged, just a soundless blur of vermin darting across wood chips. It moved with such speed that while I can tell you it disappeared under the bed kiddy-corner from ours, my eyes weren't quick enough to process how exactly it flattened its body to an eighth of an inch.

I slowly inched a few steps forward, in the event the little bastard had friends, and set about surveying the damage.

I saw the cob on the ground first. The kernels had been picked clean, mowed down so evenly the cob looked as if it had been scraped with a knife.

(Note: This being a family publication, and cursing generally frowned upon, here's a handy guide to the way I'm going to code my reactions as we proceed — dadgum is the "d-word" and fudgesickles is the "f-word.")

Dadgum-it.

Then I looked up.

Fudgesickles, fudgesickles, fudgesickles. God fudgesickles-ing dadgum-it.

Scratch the code words because they're even making me laugh, and this wasn't the least bit funny. I felt sick and deflated, and I would have collapsed in tears if I weren't so angry and so freaked out that rats were lurking, unseen, all around me.

My beautiful ears of corn had been splayed open, their husks shredded, silks in tatters, kernels decimated and along with them all the hopes I'd been harboring these last months.

The crowning achievement of my entire gardening season wiped out.

That the rats hadn't gotten to all the ears hardly mattered, because I knew they would as soon as I turned my back. Every ear that remained — there were about five, including a baby — would suffer the same fate unless I stood guard over them with a gun 24/7. Which, crazy as I am, I wasn't about to do.

 Tomatoes untouched, corn picked clean. Why, rats, why?
Tomatoes untouched, corn picked clean. Why, rats, why?
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DNAinfo/Patty Wetli

Like I said, no match for rats.

What really killed me was that the rodents had plenty of other options — especially beans and tomatoes. In fact, I had harvested tomatoes just two days prior, and tossed the cracked and blotchy ones onto the ground specifically as a sacrificial offering to the rats.

Omnivorous my a**.

According to the Royal Horticultural Society, rats are especially fond of root vegetables, pumpkins, squash and sweet corn.

I Googled "why do rats eat corn and not tomatoes" and came up with a bunch of search responses applicable to people asking the question on behalf of their pet rat, and I just can't sympathize with those people at the moment.

I also started looking up ways to protect corn against rats in the future, but my heart wasn't in it. This year's crop is gone, and I'm not ready to think about next year, especially when the carcasses of my ruined ears are still lying in the dumpster outside my back door.

That's right, I brought my dead soldiers home. Perhaps consigning them to the garbage wasn't the most decent of burials, but I wasn't about to leave them on the stalk, open to further indignities. I wasn't about to give the rats the satisfaction of so much as a single kernel to gnaw on.

I'd like to say that I removed each ear with tender loving kindness, but these were rat-chewed cobs, after all, and that totally grossed me out. I grabbed them bare-handed and ripped, half-crying, half-cursing.

I glanced in the direction of the bed where the rat had bolted. I knew he was under there, staring at me with his wee beady eyes, biding his time until I left and he could resume his carnage.

Fudgesickle you, fudgesickle you, fudgesickle you, I spat at him.

After recovering the fallen cobs, I set about rescuing the survivors. Mostly of them weren't fully ripened, one likely wasn't even pollinated. I picked them anyway. They wouldn't, as long as I was around, just sit there like helpless targets waiting for the slaughter.

People talk, in the growing world, about "gardening fatigue" that typically sets in this time of year. In the past, I've interpreted that, from personal experience, as "I've had it with watering."

But today I feel weary and tired of battling Nature when the odds seem so stacked in her favor.

Sure, I'll probably get excited again in a week or two when I've got carrots and onions to boast about. Right now, I'd like to wallow.

Can I get another moment of silence for my corn?

(Silence.)

 

For previous episodes of "Garden in the City" listen here: