Wildlife Buffet in Blacklick Ohio

It's been almost nine years now since we moved into our home in Blacklick Ohio and little did I know then that we would eventually be feeding anything that has four legs and fur. We have actually had our backyard registered with the National Wildlife Federation as a Wildlife Preserve. We started out with small amounts of deer corn in a couple of groung feeders to keep the deer from eating our landscaping. As it turns out, the deer must have communicated with their friends from other parts of the region that they knew of a great place to get a free meal. We are now putting out aroung 80 to 100 pounds of deer corn per day along with lots of bird seed and let's not forget the squirells, racoons, and ground hogs. It gets a little crowded on Tuesday because after six P.M. it's Doe night and the bucks show up in mass. Last winter, we noticed a white cat that seemed to be living in our woods, so we began to put out leftover food each morning from our inside cats. White kitty as we so fondly named her, started eating the food that we put out . Then we decided that it was really cold outside and we purchased on line, a cat house that has a heated pad that activates upon her sitting on it. She was a little hesitant at first but once she got used to seeing it on the patio, she started sleeping in it. Another group that comes like clockwork are the hundreds of ducks that come for their dinner every evening around six. It's pretty interesting to watch them work their way around the feeders in order to get a little nibble. There is one white duck out of the entire group. We think she must be something special because she always gets her way when it comes to moving to the front of the line at dinner time. We even have to get someone to feed while we are gone on vacation. Otherwise we would come home to a long line of animals wandering where in the world we have been.

I guess the moral of this story is to be careful what you wish for. The deer quit eating our landsacping, but now we feeding the entire wildlife population in Blacklick.