The bone I would ask for is flowering trees on the slope. Surely, they will not leave bare earth as the finished product so you can figure that there will be some sort of groundcover on the slope... which, depending on how all of this relates to their facility, may become an unattended weedy, green "natural area." People post pictures of such areas here from time to time and, oddly, others fawn over how lovely such "natural" areas are. You might find out how they're planning on treating this slope/berm as their solution might already be sufficient and your asking for something different to be interjected into it might actually create a less desirable finished product. Several years back one of my best friends lived at the edge of our town in a house that had been the family home for decades. Then the state decided to build an interstate highway less than 1/2 mile to the south. And a corporation decided to build a plant nearby. Since there was nothing between my friend's family home and the interstate but cornfield, and it was decimated during the multi-year-long project, my friend was at her wits end during the whole process, thinking that her life and property was forever ruined. She attended every meeting relevant to the construction of the projects, wrote letters to every person involved, complained constantly and was basically consumed by the construction process until the road and plant was finished (about 3 or so years ?) Once all the construction equipment was gone and the landscaping was in place, everything calmed down. It wasn't all that much time after that my friend stopped giving any of it a thought. Today, I'm sure she never even thinks about what seemed like so much grief at the time. (She still lives in the same house.)

I had a similar problem about 8-10 years ago, a large deer herd eating everything. Worst damage was in the late summer-early fall, when the bucks would use my young fruit trees to polish their antlers and rub off the itchy "velvet." They killed a few, and maimed some others that did survive. I had to do as you suggest, putting fences made of six foor wire mesh around each tree -- about 50 trees total. Since then, our deer herd in the neighborhood has declined a lot. The neighbor two doors down had the misfortune of hitting 3 deer with her car with a one year period -- her insurance agent couldn't believe it. I almost hit them a couple of times. Enough of them got killed on the roads that the population has dropped significantly. I have a fawn living in my yard right now -- quite small when I saw it about 5 weeks ago for the first time. I likes to spend the days in my corn and under my blackberry bushes, and, of course, it is stripping things at night, like collards, kale, soybeans, etc. I'm cutting things down as soon as they are havested, like the sweet corn, to remove cover and hopefully make "Bambi" move on to greener pastures.

Ingrid - even with catastrophic losses in gardening ... a garden is very repeatable. While we morn for a loss of a rose, or an entire garden for that matter, it is still not all that personal. After being in the horse business for many years I can tell you that the birth of a new foal, the marvelous sense of teamwork in training a horse to show level, having a customer call up and tell you sold them the best horse in the entire world - none of those things balance out the walking into a stall to find a horse fatally injured during the night, or an owner telling you that he lost his prized stallion in a recent horrible tornado that he purchased from you years ago and that you handled every day for his first year, or losing a mare and foal during the birthing process to a breeched birth. There is no real pain in gardening. But there is unspeakable beauty. Horses - they are a passion of the heart, an addiction with way more pain than pleasure. The garden is what keeps me (at least somewhat) sane.

Hi Bubbadillo, Well, having read your post, I wonder if the roadrunner (and he was pecking at the pile of henscratch) was more interested in the little tree frogs that live in my potted plants near the garage/barn. We haven't had as many wild turkeys OR quail the last couple of years, but we've had more roadrunners........so, maybe now I understand the connection! I've never seen a roadrunner eat a snake (wouldn't that be fascinating!), but I am glad to hear that they do. We haven't had a lot of snakes around our house this year (except for the black rat snakes that have been trying, so far unsuccessfully, to eat our baby guineas). On the day that the pallet factory burned a couple of weeks ago, though, a lady who lives on Peanut Farm Road WAS bitten by a rattlensnake, and the Love County medics had to leave the fire and go to the hospital to help treat her. I find the wildlife just as fascinating as you do, and have learned (by watching) the ebb and flow of wild animal populations......for example, the way the rabbit population will go up while the coyote population is down....and then, of course, when the coyote population rises, the rabbit population drops. In our yard this year, we have a LOT more deer than usual coming to eat and drink...even having bucks come out in broad daylight, which I seldom see. I know the larger predators will follow, so I just do my best to make sure the chickens, guineas, dogs and cats are locked up securely before twilight. The only wildlife we seldom see on our own place here is the wild pigs, and I bet you have them more out west than we do here. We had them hanging out in our creekbed one year, where they wallowed and left huge holes in shallow parts of the creek. Another year, they frequented the back part of our property, which is fairly close to the Red River. I am only moderately afraid of the panthers and cougars, since they are rarely seen and the worst they've ever done here is "roar" at me at night if I am outside. The wild pigs, though, terrify me, as I am sure I couldn't outrun them. I DON'T miss the snakes at all. Normally we have a LOT of copperheads, water moccasins and velvet-tailed rattlers here, and the occasional western diamondback, but all I've seen in our yard this year are rat snakes and chicken snakes and, rarely, a green tree snake. It is the BEST snake year ever (fewest snakes seen), so I guess our cats are doing their job and keeping the number of rodents down. Dawn