So, last night I made some skillet apples, and as I do normally I got out a brown paper bag to put all the scraps into for taking out to one of my compost tumblers. I like this because the bag adds brown material the same time I’m adding the scraps (which are considered green) so it helps with the ratio.

It was late, and cold, and windy though, so I thought to myself “Hey, I’ll just put this bag outside on the back porch on the deck and run it to the composter tommorow.”

A few hours later my wife comes upstairs and says our cats are being well enterained by an opossum just out our (mostly glass, which is why the cats could see) back door. It was sitting there just a foot from our door and us, not a care in the world, eating the apple peels and cores.

So, not going to do that again, but you can look at it a couple ways, the opossum needed to eat too right? But do you really want a wild animal hanging around your small yard looking for food scraps? What if you have a family pet that goes outdoors, it could be bitten and have to be put down. The animal can also attack your food crops (if this was summer) or get into your garbage, or eat all your bird seed, or eat ornamentals even, plus, opossums are ugly.

It only took 3 hours maybe for the opossum to narrow in on that bag of stuff (and I’ve put bags out before without a problem, so it wasn’t as if this guy was already established in our yard).

This is why people who aren’t living out in the woods or on a farm or something anyways, people like us who live in a fairly densely populated area, should not run open compost piles. Imagine how many critters I’d have if I had an open compost pile? Raccooms, opossums, and yes, SKUNKS! Imagine that. Instead, I have 1 fully enclosed compost bin that is even on large concrete stepping stones so that nothing can burrow up into it, and 2 fully enclosed compost tumblers. Compost tumblers may be more expensive than freeform piles or large open bins, and they hold less in the end, but they work faster, and not having a bunch of nuisance critters living in your yard is a big plus. The last thing anyone wants is a skunk to take up residence under your deck because your composting kitchen scraps are readily accessible, after you pay $200 to have that skunk removed, a tumbler suddenly looks like a bargain.

And yes, I grew up in the country, in a house in the woods, and we had shotguns to deal with nuisance animals trying to live in our garage, under our deck, etc. Just for the heat and catfood. But, that too, is not an option here in town.