Oh Deer...

I noticed years ago how cyclical things are in nature here. Some years you will see a lot of one sort of animal and the next year you won't see them any more but you'll see a lot of a different type of animal.

A few years back I mentioned to an acquaintance that I had been hearing a lot of coyotes at night and he told me that was because the price of beaver pelts had gone down that year. Lower prices equals fewer people trapping beavers which equals to a higher population of beavers and a higher population of coyotes preying on the beavers.

Last year it was raccoons. They were everywhere and this year there are reports of sick raccoons showing up at people's houses and the police come by and dispatch them.

This year I'm predicting an up-coming increase in the cougar population because there seems to be deer everywhere. Day or night, I've been seeing deer on front lawns, in town, on the side of the road and in the road. I am normally a slow driver and there is so much deer activity that I've slowed it down even more. There are stretches of road on the way to my house where I have never seen deer in the past, but they are there now, too.

Driving home the other night I had to stop three different times on a five mile stretch to avoid a collision. I'm expecting a lot of auto body shops will be busy until the cougars can reset the balance of nature around here.