[MeOnTheBeach]

We have feral cats. We also have tons and tons of all sorts of birds, rabbits and assorted other critters, some of them plain vermin.

The moles are the worst. They eat the root off everything. Especially when they get in a flower bed.

No matter how many baby bunnies the dogs eat, somehow, my driveway is still full of them every summer evening and my garden is raided,

I enjoy them. The issue I have is that feral cats is they are an introduced animal. Linx and the fox are welcome to sniff around all they want.

When I find song birds dead in the yard I get pissed. But that's a rare occasion anymore.

I have had more visits from the neighbors’ cows than from a feral dog pack.

Yup! hahah!

However, the very few dog packs are really domesticated dogs that run away and then join up in a pack.

Agreed. In the instance that I described, the dogs circled me, one dog at each point on the compass. A lab at north and a rottweiler at south. The other two were just a couple mutts that didn't amount to much. Every time I turned to face the rot, the lab would "gruff, growl, and huff". It was very clear what he was doing, keeping my attention, while the rottie moved in from behind. It was the creepiest thing I've ever felt. Like I was in one of those wild life shows...

I ran at the lab with the hoe raised and yelled... and he stood his ground... I was like, what the...???

Now here's the rest of the story... I had my SUV near by and had left one of the doors open. I turned back to look for the rottweiler and he was gone. That's when the lab lost his nerve and ran away with the other dogs.

That rottweiler had seen my open door and something triggered in her...time for a ride...it jumped in and went to the very back seat of my SUV.

I had to call the sheriff's office to send a deputy to get the dog out of my vehicle. The deputy tried to get the dog out but decided it was hostile and called county animal control. Which took nearly an hour to get out to my place.

A neighbor no longer goes berry picking, because her last time included a bear encounter. These can be more dangerous to humans than any other animal, including the coyote packs.

That's always a concern of course. Coyote's can be dangerous. I'm more concerned for rabid raccoons, though. Raccoons in general are vermin.

Friend of mine has a farm out in Colorado. He has a canal running with in 100 feet of his house. His big concern is beaver. Beaver come up the water way and chew through the trees near his house. He's had to put chicken wire all around the trees. He says they can down a large tree in a single night and drop it right through your house. When one dropped a dropped a tree through his garage one night, he started shooting them.

[reformedliberal]

We are on our 2nd Akita. They are death on moles. Leave the yard looking like a minefield, but the moles at least migrate out to the fallow pasture.

You did have an unusual dog pack experience, IMO. Big dogs, like our Akitas, are usually confident enough that when facing down a larger dog or being territorial, one deep *WUFF* is all they do. I only get scared when a dog is on alert, has his lips skinned back, his ears up, back hair bristled and is slavering while barking/growling. Lips, hair and muzzle are the key cues, IMO. All my dogs seem to have an instinctive fear of a broom, though.

That Rottie obviously had been a pet, if it knew about cars. Sometimes I think people just can’t handle the large working breeds and tend to make them outside dogs and so, the dogs escape jail and go out on their own. Our 1st Akita was a showup and I think that was his story. Our vet was pretty sure he came from a breeder who had many different breeds and the dogs just didn’t get socialized to a human pack.

The worst thing about feral cats, for me, is that they beat up on my 15-year-old cat, although she is savvy about hiding. The late Akita was *his* cat’s protector, but would chase off any strange one. Don’t know yet about the puppy...he’s too young to have any real discernment. He is death on voles, though! We’ll see what he’s made of after he’s neutered and if he calms down enough to be allowed off leash or out of his pen. We’re planning on moving in a year, so we’ll have to re-acclimate him to a new territory, then. Once he’s 3 or so, he should be more trustworthy. Right now, he’s just lunch, so he stays inside, on leash when out or in his large pen for playtime.

Right on about the beavers. We let the local trappers set traps, not that it does much good and then we have to worry about them ourselves. Destructive beasts.

When our old guy died, the coyotes had a wake. They sang all night. Now, they know the pup is here and they are staying out of sight and are quieter. We see tracks and scat, of course, but they are warier. He’s only 5 months old, but already over 60 pounds. One day, he’ll be formidable. That’s at least a year away, though.

As a landowner, we can kill beaver and coyote if need be. Coon and possum usually don’t stick around an adult Akita, though. If they do, they quickly become chew toys.