Dear Editor,
As an almost 75-year-old, I'm home a lot. I don't indulge in public drunkenness. I pay my taxes. I recycle diligently. I have no grass. All my flowers are perennials, and my front yard is fenced to dissuade the deer that do not belong in town.
I sit quietly in my backyard that is fenced with a high, solid wooden fence the deer have never jumped in almost 20 years and enjoy the birds at my bird feeder and the jays and the magpies that come for the sunflower seeds and peanuts.
I have baby squirrels that come into my yard too, and the pregnant and the elderly. Squirrels don't live long in a neighbourhood with lots of loose, unregulated cats, and intense human habitation taking away more and more of their ability to feed and nest.
Shame on me for enjoying these things, but at least one of my law-abiding neighbours was able to call Okotoks Municipal Enforcement on me to enforce a law meant for keeping the deer population under control that I was in no way breaking, in effect.
But, OK, I'll be taking that half a bag of peanuts I cannot use out to the Foothills Country Hospice where they feed the deer within sight of the building for the enjoyment of the dying. I'm sure someone will be able to call and send law enforcement out there to make the last moments of the dying just a little bit worse.
Seriously, anyone could see this sort of 'enforcement' is just a bit over the top. I miss the old Okotoks that was filled with wonderful people that would have laughed at the absurdity of this whole situation, if only it were funny.
Kathie Roller Stell
Okotoks
