Improvised Garden Gate Latch Staple

For reasons not relevant here, I ended up making a field-expedient repair to a garden gate latch:

The hole in the post just to the left of the obviously improvised staple shows where the Original Staple had vanished, never to be seen again. It looks like the gate has shifted an inch or so to the right (or the post to the left), which would explain why the staple gradually worked loose.

The improvised staple is a length of coat hanger wire bent into a square U, with the ends snipped off at an acute angle:

Those points do look scary, don’t they?

Then I gently tapped it into place, driving maybe ¾ inch of wire in the wood, flattening the loop a little more than I wanted, but not enough to make me try again.

Not our gate, not Mary’s garden, but deer pose a threat to all veggies within, without regard to ownership.

I have *a lot* of coat hanger wire for repairs like this …