Salisbury's cemetery and crematorium shouldn't be killing fields for deer

MANY moons ago, we lived briefly in an isolated moorland cottage in the Peak District.
I remember the day we absent-mindedly left our five-bar gate open.
We came home to a garden denuded of flowering plants, including the white lacecap hydrangea I’d nurtured from one home to another, ever since my husband bought it for me on our first anniversary because it reminded me of the tiny beads on my wedding dress.
You have my permission to sigh sentimentally.
Sheep, you see, are sadly lacking in understanding when it comes to the concept of private property.
I wasn’t happy, believe me. But I didn’t actually need that plant to conjure up fond memories of our big day. They were still there – still are.
All of which brings me neatly to the vexed question of the deer nibbling their delicate way through the city’s crematorium grounds and the adjoining cemetery.
In the past I’ve had to report on vandals damaging families’ precious memorial trees in our parks, and I’ve felt the same mixture of anger and sadness as any right-thinking person would.
If the oiks responsible for this wanton destruction were ever caught, I’d like to see them paraded through the streets to face the court of public opinion. People ought to know better. There’s no excuse.
But culling - one of the options under consideration to deal with the deer - is killing, under a slightly more palatable name.
We can’t say it’s achieved its aim where the nation’s badger population is concerned.
Do we now want our places of quiet remembrance sullied with the corpses of gentle creatures, slaughtered because they eat to stay alive?
Nature poses constant challenges to our human desire to impose orderliness and the rule of law on every last corner of the wonderful wilderness that is this world. And it always will.
Despite my disappointing early experience I remain a keen (fair weather) gardener, and I’d be as upset as the next rose lover if I found Bambi and his pals chewing on my William Shakespeare or my Gertrude Jekyll, or, heaven forbid, my Great Maiden’s Blush.
But at the same time I’m enough of an urbanite to still feel thrilled and privileged when I catch a fleeting glimpse of one of these shy animals in a field alongside some roaring hell of a motorway.
Admit defeat graciously, city councillors, if you can’t afford to fork out for fences. You know it makes sense.