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Just a thought.. but isn't that the reason you move to the Mts?? I mean moving to the Mts and then complaining about the wildlife seems kinda odd to me.

I think a lot of people move to the mountains to get away from other people (it doesn't work though). When she moved there thirty years ago, wild animals were kept under control. Now, of course, we are becoming like India where animals are free to roam wherever they please.

Keeping a garden or compost heap is out of the question. Her daughter believes they should "coexist" with the cougars and bears. She just had her first baby. I'll bet she starts having second thoughts about living with predators. They are becoming bolder every day.

re: Just a thought.. but isn't that the reason you move to the Mts?? I mean moving to the Mts and then complaining about the wildlife seems kinda odd to me.)))

Point taken, but there's more to the story. For instance, for the first half of the twentieth century, there were chestnut trees in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and not many bears to eat the nuts. Some, but not many, and the chestnuts provided the mast to support the wildlife in style. Bears were thinned and hunted. Now the trees are long gone, but the park rangers want to restore the wildlife pop to former levels. So they turn loose bears they have bred for that purpose--loose on farmers, orchards, etc.

You have bears that should have chestnuts after your garbage--but the park rangers won't let you shoot them. The bears are reproducing in numbers higher than when they had chestnuts to eat.

The problem is government-invented, not natural.

My wife and I live in the mountains, south of the "South Hill" area of Spokane. We have deer, quail, raccoons, coyotes, porcupines, owls, chipmunks, red squirrels, hawks and all kinds of other critters around our property, and we really enjoy them all. We also make sure to be smart about being around them. We don't leave garbage out where animals can get into it, and we don't do anything to either encourage or discourage the local critters. I have a strict "do not feed" policy with the local wildlife, with the exception of used bird food from my parrot, which gets tossed out back for the quail to feast upon. No feeders of any kind, but lots of natural habitat for the critters to live in.

Porcupines are a real hoot. They'll walk out into the yard, then just kind of "park", and meditate on what they want to do next. You can walk right up to them, heck, you could probably pet them if you were foolish enough to do so. They just sit there and look at you, as calm as can be. No bears or wolves in this area, at least none that I've seen. I just try to stay out of the way of the critters, and they stay out of my way. The deer love to eat my landscaping, so we've planted mostly things that they either don't find very tasty, or that grow back quick after being munched on.

The other day there was a deer standing outside the window looking in at our houseplants, so close his breath was fogging up the glass. We all got a good laugh out of that. There is a picture I took of a ruff grouse who was about ten yards outside of the back door, strutting around in the sun, the picture came out great. All in all we've achieved a nice balance with the wildlife around here, and we all get along fine.