Look at this from a critter’s perspective: Where would you find water and food around your yard?

Let’s face a fact, we’ve got wildlife living with us even in standard-issue tract homes with relatively small yards, and they need nourishment.  

You might be able to find ways to make life more difficult for the critters, thereby tempting them to leave for easier pickings, but that decision has consequences.

That thought brings us right to the realities of interdependent wildlife networks.  

The first fact of life is that we have coyotes and worse prowling our streets and yards nightly. They are looking for house cats or small yard pets (including small dogs) that they can quickly and savagely dispatch and carry off for a secluded meal, or to share with their own family.  

I will never forget driving down a Santa Barbara road one morning and watching four coyotes trotting in single file from a street up into a little draw, each one with a house cat in its jaws.

That was a good pack hunt for them. It was a nightmare for the house cats and the families who cared for and about them.  

Many of us leave a water bowl out overnight for an outdoor pet. That’s fine, but understand that every wild critter is going to take advantage of a fresh local supply of clean water.  

Leaving that bowl of water out invites critters to stay. An alternative could be to give your pet a drink of water just before your bedtime and then first thing in the morning, so the bowl isn’t out there luring in critters.

Any solution has intended and unintended consequences. For example, my neighbor has a large pine tree right next to our fence. He built up a little hill around it with lawn trimmings at the base of the tree.

What he has created is prime burrowing habitat and there are lots of critters using it. One is a huge raccoon that towers over the dogs in both yards and intimidates them at night, causing long fits of barking through the night.

The big raccoon helps himself to water in bowls left out overnight.

Without the steady water source, would the big critter relocate? Perhaps, but that would give us another problem.

That pile of yard trimmings and the lower part of the pine tree is also prime habitat for rats.

I doubt the neighbor really understands what he has created. Those rats and other burrowing critters provide plenty of protein for predators including our big raccoon.

In fact that raccoon may be big enough to keep smaller coyotes away from his food source. So, what the raccoon gives back in return for his home and water is an ongoing reduction in the rat population.

At this point, I don’t want that big critter to leave.

On the other side of my property we have a skunk that hangs out regularly. He is pretty easy to get along with, as long as we don’t make any threatening moves toward it.

The skunk and the raccoon have an understanding and somewhat of a truce.

So why am I okay with the skunk hanging out? The answer is similar to the reasons for putting up with the raccoon. That skunk eats bugs, spiders and mice that I don’t want to have around.

Our neighborhood wildlife definitely bring something to the table in our interdependent network. They are handy to have around so they are welcome to a bowl of water.