Not Deer, nope.

My wife and I moved back to the Okanagan in the Southern Interior of British Columbia last January. We purchased a new house in a small sub division on a rocky bluff overlooking Skaha Lake between the City of Penticton and the village of Okanagan Falls. We are about 100 meters (325 feet), higher than the valley bottom.

I do not have a large yard and we live on the edge of the Ian McTaggart Cowen Wildlife Protected Area, the boundary of which is 500 meters East of our place. There is a lot of wildlife about. We have many deer, have seen Bobcats, a colony of Yellow Bellied Marmots, Bald Eagles, Hawks, Owls, Turkey Vultures, had a young bear about for a week or two last spring. We are also close to the Vaseux - Bighorn National Wildlife Protected Area and the New South Okanagan National Park Reserve. So we are surrounded by wild lands on both sides of the Okanagan Valley, most of it protected habitat.

New kids on the block this spring are a small flock of California Big Horn Sheep Rams that have been hanging about our place for the past week. I took the images above, this morning. The boys were hanging out on the bluff just outside my back deck. There are six of them Spring is finally here and the animals are beginning to move from the valley, back up into the mountains. Our neighborhood seems to have been chosen by theses fellows while they wait for the snowline to move further up the mountain. They have been eating grass on my front lawn for the past few days, last night they went around the back to spend the night on the bluff.

I have a small fenced yard adjacent to my back deck with some raised beds and my small surviving collection of roses, about 20 varieties. Last spring when I was working on the beds and the fence was not complete, the deer pruned all of my roses after they leafed out. They even went out onto my raised wood deck, which arches over a steep gully and pruned the roses in pots. Never thought they would go out on a raised wood deck. This year the fence is complete, so I hope my roses only get pruned by me next week and not by the deer again later. I may spray the new foliage when the roses leaf out with a solution of Irish Spring soap and weak blood meal just to make that eventuality less likely.

Don't know if Big Horn Sheep are partial to roses, but at any rate, they should be up the mountain by the time the roses leaf out. I've heard a lot of critter stories on this forum over the years, deer, snakes, voles, etc. So I just thought I'd add a new one. I do love the critters though and am glad to share the neighborhood with them all

Cheers, Rick