Yep, I'm pretty sure the deer in my garden eat cantaloupe.
Yesterday while I was weeding our cantaloupe bed, I noticed that one of the melons had a big, fat bite taken out of it. The bite mark was hidden on the bottom side of the melon and I probably wouldn't have noticed it at all if I hadn't pulled up some grass and accidentally rolled the cantaloupe a little bit.
There are clearly four large teeth marks in the bite as you can see in my photo above. And the greenish area above the main bite mark must be where the other jaw/teeth went in. To give you a sense of the size of the bite, this cantaloupe weighs almost 5 lbs... it's a pretty big melon. And the bite is pretty big too. Did I mention how big the teeth marks are? YEESH!
As I moved down the cantaloupe patch a bit and continued my weeding, I found something even more distressing. I found small remnants of another cantaloupe; just a piece of a melon rind and nothing else. Even the left over rind had been greatly chewed on - so the deer (I'm assuming) must have really liked one of our juicy, ripe cantaloupes and eaten an entire melon, in addition to biting into another.
Apparently the animals in the garden don't have manners. I cannot tell you how many half eaten or pecked tomatoes I've found this year. I don't mind sharing a little, but if they lick or bite it, they really should just eat the whole thing... ARGH!
Anyway, we've never had problems (that I know of!) with deer eating our melons, and our motion detection camera was at the other end of the garden guarding our corn so I have no proof of who did the deed. However, from the size of the bite and the way the teeth are, it just must be a deer.
Damn deer.
ps --oh, and, from those teeth marks, I'm totally scared of ever being bitten by a deer now!
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