BY LYNN HANRAHAN
Los Alamos

Thank you Councilor Ryti for being the only member of our Council to recognize the urgency of getting bear-proof roll carts and dumpsters out on the streets ASAP.  Yes, there are problems with those currently available, but surely these problems aren’t insurmountable.  Don’t we have at least a couple of thousand engineers hanging out in town?

It’s March.  Think about one year ago.  Wildfires began to rage.  In the aftermath of the Cerro Grande and Las Conchas fires it was impossible not to notice changes in behavior of big predators throughout the region.  Last year was worse.  What can we expect this summer if we don’t take this seriously?  Our ecosytem depends on big predators.  We need them, but not in our driveways with their bottoms sticking out of our roll carts.

Think direct action.  Don’t dump out all your smelly trashcans into your rollcart, stick it up on the curb, and leave for a road trip.  If possible, keep a separate sack for smelly items, only to be added on trash day, somewhere secure.  Not everyone has a garage so find what works best for you.

Stop feeding the birds now.  Throw out your hummingbird feeders.  When you write this you fully expect several snarky comments but so what?  Birdseed attracts rodents and raccoons.  Mountain lions love eating raccoons.  Snakes eat rodents.  If you follow the LA pet owners page you can’t fail to notice that the number of rattlesnakes is increasing.

My younger daughter was sharpening her machete last summer out in a shed on Barranca when she heard a weird noise.  It was an irritated rattler sitting in front of the door.  She was lucky since it was probably the only five minutes last summer she wasn’t wearing earpods.  She was also lucky because she was able to subdue the snake and get out of the shed.  The Rattlesnake Lady told her that the week before a woman in Sante Fe wasn’t so fortunate in similar circumstances and had to be lifeflighted to Denver because there was no anti- venom in New Mexico.

The same kid was jogging at nightfall last summer on top of Loma Linda with her earpods when she thought she was being kidnapped by an older couple who pulled her towards their car.  Turned out they saved her from running into a big bear.  Moral of the story?  Keep an eye out for your neighbors.

This same kid, once again, back when she was little ran in the house with her friend to get me to come look at the really cool fort they had built out on the canyon.  They failed to notice the fort was maybe a stone’s throw from a fresh mountain lion kill with bloody deer legs sticking up from a pile of pine needles.  Teach children to look up for mountain lion tails in trees, for big piles of pine needles circled by crows.  Teach them to use their noses to alert them to the presence of bears who usually stink.

As a county we don’t need to be paranoid.  We should be aware of what’s out there and look out for one another by keeping our properties tidy.  We need to work out the kinks with the bear-proof carts and dumpsters and look forward to summer.