Creating an Ecosystem

For most of my life, I've had cats. I don't particularly like cats, but the people around me do, so they're in my house. Cats catch bugs, lizards and the occasional small mammal, but mostly they kill cat kibble.

We moved to the mountains and things changed. New ecosystem. Now the cats catch moles and small snakes and bring them to us because we're obviously too lame to catch things ourselves.

Introduce chickens to the mix. The cats couldn't care less about the chickens - in fact the tom cat is obviously terrified of them. As chicks, they're sources of curiosity to the cats. I don't like to leave the tiny chicks alone with the female cat - I'm likely to lose a couple. Once they're fledged, though, they're too big to bother with.

But with the chickens came rats. Rats who first got into the feed, and then started stealing the eggs. We built our coop to be racoon-proof, but we couldn't keep the rats out without making the whole thing airtight, which just breeds germs that would hurt the chickens.

The rat problem got to be so bad that we brought in dogs. They're still puppies and learning their way around things, but dogs mean dog food sitting out all day and all night. Not just kibble, but the good wet food. With the introduction of dog food, we're now being invaded by racoons.

We have a big, racooon-proof container on the deck for the dog's kibble. This morning it had been pushed over and pushed to the edge of the deck. There's a new doggy door in our laundry room where we keep the cat food, and there were racoon prints on the floor in there. The bags of pet food under the utility sink had been ripped open.

I'm telling you, I can hardly wait until these dogs are big enough to take on a racoon. It could definitely happen. That's what they're for.