Cat or Fox

[Sue]

What can you do....
I'd planted out my early peas, in a raised bed, covered with a nice new piece of fleece. Next day a trail of muddy footprints right over the top. the fleece stretched over cloch hoops has ripped and most of the 18 pea plants underneath have been broken and crushed.
These are the third lot of pea plants I grew, the first two lots eated by mice

It gets very frustrating sometimes!
Sue

[Two_Sheds]

Maybe it was cats, chasing the meeces ?

[sewer rat]

Cats chasing the meeces under the fleeces !?

[janeyo]

Either way - bummer!

janeyo

[TPeers]

What size were the footprints? Cat prints tend to be less than 2" across and fox prints tend to be 2" and over.

Bad luck about the peas though - enviromesh is stronger if you have any and peas will take a bit of cold so that might be a better choice.

[Waffler]

2"!!
Surely that's a lion!

[TPeers]

Two inches not 2 feet - feet is a single mark i.e. 2' = 2 feet, 2" = two inches.

[Sue]

As am in Tunbridge Wells and nowhere near Longleat so can be fairly certain it wasn't a lion.
Prints were muddy and so difficult to tell on size but quite large splodgy prints so may have been a fox.
But whatever it was it has SQUASHED my peas and that is unforgiveably especially as the flaming mice had got the first two lots.
And now they're uprooting my cabbage seedlings (mice not lions) why? I must have lost about 12 plants to the little beggars now.
Still rise above it....
Sue

[mrs dog]

Foxes are usually light on their feet. Also being the clever creatures they are they would normally pull the cover off and go under! Cats however know they have right of way so just plough through obsticles on the asumption they shouldn't be there in the first place. I've got spare peas etc if you need them. I don't put mine out now until they are big enough to fight back as it were!

[Sue]

Mrs Dog
Thankyou, very kind offer, but I do have another bed which has not been trampled on (as yet).
Last year I only planted the one lot of peas and this year I've got the T & M 4 pea pack which is supposed to take me from May to October so have got some more to sow this week.
They just might regrow. I had some Aquadulce Claudia broad beans that got knocked about and I cut them back and they've all regrown, much stronger than the first shoots, so here's hoping
Sue