O Christmas Tree (And Liver Powder)

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, dried blood out among the trees...

For real. Lately, Christmas tree farmers have been having such a hard time keeping rampant deer from nibbling, gnawing and/or butting their trees that they've been on the hunt for a new way to keep our fawny friends far from the firs. Seeing as there's no such thing as a scaredeer and fences cost a lot, let us lift an ornament to Jeff Owen, a researcher at North Carolina State University who came up with the novel solution: blo-o-o-od.

Dried blood and egg powder, to be specific — two animal byproducts that usually are sold for a pittance to the pet food industry, which uses them for flavoring (just one more reason you might not want to try your kitty's kibbles).

Though a little pinch might make Alpo appealing, it turns out that once you spread heaps of dried blood around and it starts to decay, the smell "actually elicits a fear response in the deer and keeps them away from the crops," Owen says. As a Christmas tree specialist — yep, for real — he's so psyched by the results that now he's looking at other putrid possibilities, including liver powder and fish meal. More power to him. (And a lifetime supply of soap.)

All of this is great news to folks who are getting a mite tired of darling deer taking over the world. First they came for the flowers, and we did nothing. Then they came for the vegetable gardens, and we did nothing. But now that the deer are actually munching some pine trees down to the width of a pencil — making Charlie Brown's look like the Rockefeller Center tree — it is time to get serious about banishing Bambi.

It's also time to salute the beleaguered Christmas tree farmers, who every year have to justify their existence in a world of aluminum alternatives.

Christmas trees are a crop. They're grown, just like flowers and wheat and corn, to be harvested and enjoyed.

What's more, the areas where Christmas trees are grown are often pretty bad bets for other crops. A barren slope covered with doomed Christmas trees is better than a barren slope that's just barren. Prettier, too. The trees hold soil in place. And while they're alive for their eight to 12 years, they do what trees do: eat the carbon dioxide we don't want hanging around. Once the trees are felled, there's still good news: The farmers who hope to keep making a living replace each of them with one to three seedlings to ensure a new crop is ready a decade or so from now.

Fake trees, meanwhile, mostly are made in China (though the first were made here by a toilet brush company!). They tend to last about nine years. That means nine years of no chopping, but it also means that in year 10, off goes the artificial tree to languish in a dump forever. The real trees, meanwhile, can be — and often are — wood-chipped by the local community and used as the stuff underfoot on playgrounds.

Of course, ideally you'd have a live and towering pine tree in the front yard to decorate and love and smell. You'd hang a bird feeder from it and cut some low branches for wreaths, and you'd have hot chocolate to sip made from real milk, not a packet of powder with hot water.

Barring that, it's nice to know that there's a fine crop of firs coming soon to a corner near you. Just beware of any deer that aren't attached to a sleigh.

Lenore Skenazy is the author of "Who's the Blonde That Married What's-His-Name? The Ultimate Tip-of-the-Tongue Test of Everything You Know You Know — But Can't Remember Right Now" and "Free-Range Kids: How to Raise Safe, Self-Reliant Children (Without Going Nuts with Worry)." To find out more about Lenore Skenazy (lskenazy@yahoo.com) and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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