there's an argument here for fencing the tomato patch

Any morning I have time, I get our ratties out in the sun room.  I drink my coffee, they run around and have fun, and we all do a bit of cuddling.  This morning, we had visitors.

 

During these mornings, Maya eats her breakfast in bed.  That is, she is put in the bedroom with a couple of frozen Kongs or equivalent long-lasting snacks.  She is usually quiet, though once the food is gone there is sometimes an outbreak of whining, or a few long-suffering sighs.  This morning, she indulged in some frustration barking, so I think she must have smelled the deer.  They were, after all, right outside the house.

If it had been Maya hanging out with me in the sun room, I would never have seen the deer (or not for long, and at much greater distance).  Maya has a big impact on how I experience wildlife and wild spaces, and I occasionally feel frustrated by her critter-chasing ways.

On the other hand, if Maya had been in the sun room, I would have more tomato plants left.

Really, the tomato plants were frozen in an early frost, and the deer are welcome to anything they can salvage.  The fire pretty much destroyed a lot of the usual food sources, so it will be a lean winter for most grazing animals here...not that you'd think it to look at this big guy.

I don't mind losing a few squash plants to the gopher (watching them vanish, inch by jerky inch, downwards into the ground is entertainment enough to pay for the loss) or a few tomatoes to the deer, and I know that the raccoons that eat the raspberries also sometimes eat the cute garter snakes.  I generally don't do much to try to micromanage the visitors to my yard.  I suppose it seems a little unfair to create a resource-rich environment and then punish animals for doing what comes naturally.

Maya has no such compunctions.  She has killed three deer mice in the yard, and tries her hardest to do the same to the chipmunks, ground squirrel, and occasional cat.  I scan the yard before letting her out, and in the case of slow-moving animals (torpid snakes, the occasional baby bird) I will go out and shoo them gently into safe places.  I leash her on hikes when wildlife is in the area, but otherwise figure that there are limits to my ability to prevent Maya from having a larger impact on the natural world than I might prefer.

It is nice to go places without her sometimes though, and re-experience the pleasure of being quiet around wild animals.  Even if I am just going to my sun room, to sip coffee, let the rats warm my toes, and watch a couple of deer eat the garden.