If you have visited Butterfly Ridge lately, you may have noticed a peculiar smell as you walk the boardwalk from the parking lot into the nature center. That smell is the “smell of victory”!

The smell is our deer deterrence system. We have tried a variety of methods to keep the deer from eating our Cup Plant (pictured above). The first year (2019) the Cup Plant in the wetland bloomed, the display of butterflies on these blooms was nothing short of spectacular. Since then, the blooms have become fewer and fewer to the point in 2023 we had zero blooms, as the deer’s appetite for the plant has grown. Cup Plant does not respond well to predation, and while the plant stays alive, it will not bloom if the terminal bud is eaten.

So what have we tried to dissuade the deer? Scare crows, solar powered motion detection lights, human hair, dog hair, bar soap, etc. The lights worked to a degree for a year or so. Now, the deer politely thank us for lighting their food. But the current deer deterrence system, that smells so strongly, so far is working really well. If you really want to know what it is, then continue reading past the cute deer picture that follows. If you are not up to what is going to be a pretty gross next paragraph, then stop here, with the warm fuzzy feeling that Butterfly Ridge will have beautiful Cup Plant blooms this year.

Alrighty, brave ones, the new deer deterrence system is a mixture of human urine and bloodmeal, roughly one cup of blood meal mixed into five gallons of urine. The concoction has been sitting, aging if you will, for about six months. We apply it about every three to four days, more often if we get rain. We apply it directly onto the pollinator plants that the deer are consuming which is currently limited to Cup Plant, Jerusalem Artichoke, Bergamot, and Giant Purple Hyssop, growing near the parking lots and in the wetland.

So, when you come visit us, don’t think about the source of the smell, but rather the victorious result of the smell!