I love wildlife, but...

[passiveporcupine]

15. I have occassional raccoons here too, but not as many as when I first moved in.

I love Opossums and wish my dogs would leave them alone. I don't let the dogs out at night because I've had to drag them away from Opossums playing dead. But Opossums visit me under my house at night all summer long. My cabin is post and pier in the back so any small critter cat get under it. Until two years ago, I had chickens and they always brought the raccoons around at night, but I had them safely secured. I didn't mind the raccoons.

Unfortunately for me my problems are rodents. I don't have any outbuildings, like a garage or barn, that I can store things in and rodents can't get into...so I don't have a place to store anything securely outside. The first year I lived here, the property was swarming with adorable chipmunks and other rodents, I lost many tools (mostly the electric cords attached) and a brand new rubber raft I stored in a building outside (they basically ate the whole raft. I don't know if they used it for bedding or actually ate the rubber...but there were only a few shreds left after winter), and they chewed holes in my wood cabin walls and even chewed through my phone line. I have been invaded by packrats because I have hay down in the goat barn. If I didn't have cats inside, my cabin would be overrun with mice and rats. My Angel Baby that the coyote got was my best hunter and he has brought me many a packrat and snake and lizard (most of the snakes and lizards are fine, I just release them) and he even brought me a big dead rattle snake once. He was probably the most effective hunter I had at keeping rodent populations in control around here.

My dogs have treed a mountain lion about 100' from my house...no harm no foul, I just called them inside until it left. We had a mamma bear problem one year and she trashed my bird feeders and ripped a huge hole out of the side of my new trashcan waiting by the road for pickup...took the trash and dragged it up a hill, and knocked over my neighbors beehives...but I had no problem with her or her cub, who visited too, because they were not hurting my animals. Not even my little goats outside. I don't put bird feeders out in the summer any more (except for hummers).

I have been here 18 years and never lost a cat to a coyote before, because most of them know to stay away from human areas and there is a lot of open land here for them to roam. I live in the woods and am surrounded by county forest and orchards and they have lots of places to live without bothering people. But this male coyote is not a normal coyote. He has been acclimated to humans and is no longer afraid of them and that's a problem. That's why I think maybe someone was feeding him (maybe not intentionally).

I have four cats now and three are fine being indoor cats. One is not. She is as dedicated a hunter as Angel was, but she usually only catches mice. He was a bigger cat and would tackle bigger prey. She loves hunting at night and is now going crazy because she's locked in. She has a problem using a cat box, and except when everything is buried under snow, she usually goes outside to do her thing...now she cries when she has to go because I won't let her out. She is pooping on a puppy pee pad now in front of the cat box, but she's not happy about it. She is also around 14 and has been hunting all her life. Being locked in is driving her nuts.

And if I can't have barn cats here to keep down the rodent population, I will lose too much to rodent damage. I have a lot of expensive tools outside, and I'm not real thrilled at the idea of losing any of it, or having rodents nesting in the walls of my cabin again, or packrats in my goat hay, because they pee in it and the goats won't eat it. I need my hunting cats.