I have a pact with the spiders in my house. If I spot them running across the floor or on the ceiling or tucked away in a corner, they’re not bothering me, so I won’t bother them. If I see one in an inconvenient place like the dinner table or hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the room, I gently relocate them outdoors.
But…if I’m lying in bed trying to go to sleep and I feel one crawling up my arm, it’s broken the pact, and it can’t be trusted to leave me alone anymore, so it gets a quick and painless death.
I was tilling my garden a month or two ago and got to one end, turned around, and casually strolling right through the middle of the plot, literally 10 feet in front of me and a very loud tiller, was a young buck. Completely unafraid of me or the tiller.
On another day, I was using a chainsaw to cut down some buckthorn and that same buck was within 5 feet of me eating the leaves on the trees I just cut down. Again completely unafraid.
I put up a small net around the perimeter a few days before I put my plants in and they knocked it over, tore the net, and bent the poles. There wasn’t even anything in the garden! And to top it all off, there were several fresh piles of poop.
So I put in 8 ft. T poles every 4 feet around the perimeter, doubled up the net, secured it at the top and the bottom, and they haven’t gotten in yet (although I watched one of them biting at it). Unfortunately the neighbors are feeding these deer, so they have almost no fear of people.