First off, let me say, I'm a gardener ... I totally and completely
understand about 'nuisance animals' and understand the fact that critters
sometimes need to be dispatched for various reasons. On the other hand, I
totally feel that we, as humans, bring a lot (if not all) of crap upon
ourselves. I've had issues w/woodchucks in the past and I've relocated
several (I can't bring myself to kill them, I know you're not supposed to
move them either, but oh well).

Within the past five years or so (maybe longer, I've lost all sense of time)
Massachusetts voted to "Ban Cruel Leghold Traps" and guess what, now
everybody is complaining that they can't let their kids or pets out because
they might get eaten by a coyote, just this last week in my home town (20
miles north of Boston) got a permit to trap and kill 9 beavers and tear down
their damn because it's causing the water in the local pond to rise way
above 'normal' -- I just would love to ask each and every one of the
buttheads who had to go out there in their hip-waders how many of them voted
to ban the cruel traps?? I can almost guarantee they all did, seeing how
it's so cruel for the animals and all, yet letting them live, then trapping
them, killing them and ripping down their home is such great fun.

I'm just disgusted w/all the McMansions and developments, etc., and then
everybody complaining the deer are eating their plants, etc. I'm just
completely sick of it all.

On the flip side of the coyote thing ... I don't have any more woodchucks
:-)

Catty One
-formerly known as LeeAnne-
20 miles north of Boston MA
and damn it's cold up here!!!!

On Fri, 21 Jan 2005 10:36:46 -0500, "Catty One"
wrote:

First off, let me say, I'm a gardener ... I totally and completely
understand about 'nuisance animals' and understand the fact that critters
sometimes need to be dispatched for various reasons. On the other hand, I
totally feel that we, as humans, bring a lot (if not all) of crap upon
ourselves. I've had issues w/woodchucks in the past and I've relocated
several (I can't bring myself to kill them, I know you're not supposed to
move them either, but oh well).

I've left my woodchuck alone. Last summer Mrs Woodchuck moved in.
Now I'm anticipating a population explosion to match my rabbit
population. Its like the Wild Kingdom around here sometimes. Wait
till I put in my pond.

Within the past five years or so (maybe longer, I've lost all sense of time)
Massachusetts voted to "Ban Cruel Leghold Traps" and guess what, now
everybody is complaining that they can't let their kids or pets out because
they might get eaten by a coyote, just this last week in my home town (20
miles north of Boston) got a permit to trap and kill 9 beavers and tear down
their damn because it's causing the water in the local pond to rise way
above 'normal' -- I just would love to ask each and every one of the
buttheads who had to go out there in their hip-waders how many of them voted
to ban the cruel traps?? I can almost guarantee they all did, seeing how
it's so cruel for the animals and all, yet letting them live, then trapping
them, killing them and ripping down their home is such great fun.

Has there been any problems with coyotes actually bothering kids or
others in the East? I know that cougars have killed people in the
west. I've never seen a coyote around here, while out west they're
walking down main street it seems.

I'm just disgusted w/all the McMansions and developments, etc., and then
everybody complaining the deer are eating their plants, etc. I'm just
completely sick of it all.

People love their animals but don't want to think about what proper
management means. Pennsylvania has a higher deer population then in
early colonial times despite all the hunting, and that's due to lack
of predators. Some animals are co-existing just fine with humans,
maybe a bit more the we'd like.

Trapping seems wrong to me -- I hate to think of animals suffering
needlessly. Cages seem better but since the whole point is to kill
the critter, may as well put little land mines around.

The only alternatives that come to mind would be more hunting, which
would be difficult in densely populated areas, or some type of birth
population control. I've heard contradictory stories about birth
control. It seems to harm the animals the least, making it very
friendly to animal lovers, but if it doesn't work then its not a
solution. It also seems to be difficult to implement.

What other options are out there?

On the flip side of the coyote thing ... I don't have any more woodchucks
:-)
Send some of those doggies over. I guess if I'd get a dog my problems
would take care of themselves too.

Catty One
-formerly known as LeeAnne-
20 miles north of Boston MA
and damn it's cold up here!!!!

I though you New Englanders reveled in that stuff?

Swyck

wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jan 2005 10:36:46 -0500, "Catty One"
wrote:
...20 miles north of Boston MA
and damn it's cold up here!!!!


I though you New Englanders reveled in that stuff?


(1) 90% of people living in New England are "from away".

(2) 46.3% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

In article , wrote:

On Fri, 21 Jan 2005 10:36:46 -0500, "Catty One"
wrote:

First off, let me say, I'm a gardener ... I totally and completely
understand about 'nuisance animals' and understand the fact that critters
sometimes need to be dispatched for various reasons. On the other hand, I
totally feel that we, as humans, bring a lot (if not all) of crap upon
ourselves. I've had issues w/woodchucks in the past and I've relocated
several (I can't bring myself to kill them, I know you're not supposed to
move them either, but oh well).

I've left my woodchuck alone. Last summer Mrs Woodchuck moved in.
Now I'm anticipating a population explosion to match my rabbit
population. Its like the Wild Kingdom around here sometimes. Wait
till I put in my pond.

Rabbit warrens or groundsquirrel towns increase in population, but
woodchucks tend to be loners, making them easier to share a garden with or
even a harvest. A growing family of rabbits would be a much larger test of
tolerance & willingness to share.

Good luck with the intended pond. There's an eco-friendly pond movement
with increasing numbers of people doing whatever they can to ENCOURAGE
visits from herons & racoons instead of striving to keep all of nature
away. I'm always of two minds about it myself. Ideally wildlife is
welcome. When one has a small garden, though, a twilight visit from only
one or two deer is sufficient to spell the doom of everything.

I now have a contract to do ongoing landscaping projects throughout Shin
Lur Gardens, which is a huge private garden reliably visited by deer &
elk. It's the first time I've had to make plant choices & do landscaping
always baring in mind what deer could automatically ruin. To see a band of
elk in the garden is amazingly cool, even to just find all the elk-tracks
through an area that was raked smooth the day before is kind of thrilling.
There's a big lawn area & turf seems to be their favorite stuff, so some
prize shrubs don't get hurt as they concentrate on grass. But a row of
roses had been chomped down to nubs before I started working in those
gardens, so it seemed pretty obvious I shouldn't plant roses unless I
wanted to feed the wildlife. The decision has been made that visiting deer
& elk remain welcome as part of Shin Lur's charm. Plants that can't thrive
in their presence will be grown (if at all) in the only enclosed area.

The next few seasonal cycles will be a learning experience for me. So far
the deer have never really much bothered rhodies, but go for berrying
shrubs & roses, & of course the lawns which they're welcome to crop to
heart's delight (or hart's delight). Even some of the berrying shrubs they
ignore -- there are a whole lot of native huckleberries & for a while I
was taking a weekly bucket of fresh-picked from the shrubs, & there was
never a day when birds or deer had cleaned them out, always plenty of
berries for me. But that same wild area is devoid of mature swordferns,
which the deer apparently prefer over the huckleberries, so it might turn
out to be hard to keep ferns in the gardens too (the previous gardener
certainly didn't plant ferns & it LOOKS like the reason is because that
gardener liked heavy mulch between trees & shrubs rather than an array of
perennials; but I may discover there was no choice).

I worry a bit that if these animals can no longer gobble down roses they
WILL start damaging the rhodies & other things they presently pass over. A
small building for offices is going up on the property this coming summer,
amidst cedars so the new building will have to be surrounded by shade
gardens mainly. I'm planning to make the gardens there dominated by autumn
& winter flowering sasanqua camelleas, which I'm counting on deer not
liking TOO much. But I autumn-planted a number of blueberry shrubs & I'm
fretful the deer aren't going to permit that area to work out well, &
it'll be embarrassing if one of my first new-area projects on the grounds
turns out a complete dud.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
Visit the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com


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"dps" wrote in message
...
wrote:
On Fri, 21 Jan 2005 10:36:46 -0500, "Catty One"
wrote:
...20 miles north of Boston MA
and damn it's cold up here!!!!

I though you New Englanders reveled in that stuff?


(1) 90% of people living in New England are "from away".

(2) 46.3% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

And don't forget the statistician who drowned in a river with an average
depth of only 12 inches.

Felice

In article , Janet Baraclough
wrote:

The message
from (paghat) contains these words:


The next few seasonal cycles will be a learning experience for me. So far
the deer have never really much bothered rhodies, but go for berrying
shrubs & roses, & of course the lawns which they're welcome to crop to
heart's delight (or hart's delight).

What shrubs/foliage they eat isn't enough to be a serious problem,
the real damage deer do in a garden is bark-rubbing when their new
antlers are itchy with velvet....they can completely de-bark the trunk
of youthful trees, and kill them; or at least spoil enough branches to
wreck a magnolia etc.

This has already been done to some birches, stripped halfway around from
rubbing. I kind of was "glad" of the excuse to replace a couple of those
too-many birches with broader trees anyway. Of all the trees that might've
been rubbed, the birches were the least consequential so the best choice
for getting damaged. But if/when the day comes that the same thing is done
to trees I planted, that will be a less lucky happenstance.

Once they pick on a tree as a rubbing-place, they
keep going at the same one, so at the first shred you need to protect
the tree with wire, brush, spray, hanging a sweaty T shirt on it, or
whatever.

I'll bare that in mind, though the so-called repellants seem to be awfully
hit-&-miss judging by sundry on-line reports with many folks whining that
no matter what was sprayed on a tree the bark got rubbed.

The other damage is when stags paw the ground at each other. That can
chew up a fair bit of lawn in a night.

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
Visit the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com


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---= East/West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =---

wrote in message
...
On Fri, 21 Jan 2005 10:36:46 -0500, "Catty One"
wrote:

First off, let me say, I'm a gardener ... I totally and completely
understand about 'nuisance animals' and understand the fact that critters
sometimes need to be dispatched for various reasons. On the other hand, I
totally feel that we, as humans, bring a lot (if not all) of crap upon
ourselves. I've had issues w/woodchucks in the past and I've relocated
several (I can't bring myself to kill them, I know you're not supposed to
move them either, but oh well).

I've left my woodchuck alone. Last summer Mrs Woodchuck moved in.
Now I'm anticipating a population explosion to match my rabbit
population. Its like the Wild Kingdom around here sometimes. Wait
till I put in my pond.

Expect 4-7 young ones ... then they'll move out, dig holes nearby and start
the process all over again. I hear they are good eating, I just never tried
one myself.


Within the past five years or so (maybe longer, I've lost all sense of
time)
Massachusetts voted to "Ban Cruel Leghold Traps" and guess what, now
everybody is complaining that they can't let their kids or pets out
because
they might get eaten by a coyote, just this last week in my home town (20
miles north of Boston) got a permit to trap and kill 9 beavers and tear
down
their damn because it's causing the water in the local pond to rise way
above 'normal' -- I just would love to ask each and every one of the
buttheads who had to go out there in their hip-waders how many of them
voted
to ban the cruel traps?? I can almost guarantee they all did, seeing how
it's so cruel for the animals and all, yet letting them live, then
trapping
them, killing them and ripping down their home is such great fun.

Has there been any problems with coyotes actually bothering kids or
others in the East? I know that cougars have killed people in the
west. I've never seen a coyote around here, while out west they're
walking down main street it seems.

There have been a few 'close calls' (ie paranoid parents seeing one in a
neighborhood, or having a family of coyotes living in the bushes behind an
elementary school) so of course everybody thinks that the coyotes are out to
eat the kids. My friend's sister had her mini-doberman attacked right in
their own back yard by a coyote - 300 stitches and a few $$$$ later the dog
was OK). They also abut a lot of wooded area and have tons of wildlife come
through - if you ask me it was dumb to let the dog out like that,
unsupervised (its also why I keep my cat in the house). The population has
really boomed, combination of the trap banning as well as all the
neighborhoods springing up and driving them out of where they should be
living/hunting, etc.


I'm just disgusted w/all the McMansions and developments, etc., and then
everybody complaining the deer are eating their plants, etc. I'm just
completely sick of it all.

People love their animals but don't want to think about what proper
management means. Pennsylvania has a higher deer population then in
early colonial times despite all the hunting, and that's due to lack
of predators. Some animals are co-existing just fine with humans,
maybe a bit more the we'd like.

Trapping seems wrong to me -- I hate to think of animals suffering
needlessly. Cages seem better but since the whole point is to kill
the critter, may as well put little land mines around.

I don't think the trappers use cages, for some reason they were using the
leg-hold traps, I'm not sure what the reasoning is in one trap vs. another.
I'm not for animals suffering either - but people just didn't think when
they voted, they thought 'oh the poor animals' and not 'population control'.


The only alternatives that come to mind would be more hunting, which
would be difficult in densely populated areas, or some type of birth
population control. I've heard contradictory stories about birth
control. It seems to harm the animals the least, making it very
friendly to animal lovers, but if it doesn't work then its not a
solution. It also seems to be difficult to implement.

What other options are out there?

Sadly I don't know - if I had it in me, I'd pop nuisance woodchucks left and
right.


On the flip side of the coyote thing ... I don't have any more woodchucks
:-)
Send some of those doggies over. I guess if I'd get a dog my problems
would take care of themselves too.

Catty One
-formerly known as LeeAnne-
20 miles north of Boston MA
and damn it's cold up here!!!!

I though you New Englanders reveled in that stuff?

Reveled in what?


Swyck