Last night I put the female alpacas and the cria into the barn paddock which has 8 foot high no climb fences and two hot wires one at 4 feet and one at 7 feet.
Of course the no climb aspect relates to horses not cougars!
I also left the the radio on in the barn all night tuned to National Public Radio - all that talking will hopefully scare off the cougar from my property and if not - well at least all the alpacas will be good Democrats by next month.

The alpacas were peaceful as far as I know and one neighbor reported that her dogs barked all night long which is something we don't normally hear. So she was convinced that something was stalking about.

There was a cougar (mountain lion) in the area about 5 years ago and the local cougar hunter was brought in to kill it and did so the very first night...maybe that is what we will have to do again this time.

Being English we don't have any firearms on the farm either to scare off a cougar with noise or to actually try and kill it. Right now I am sort of wishing we did have something...far be it for me to encourage gun fire and have high velocity bullets flying all over the place I would certainly feel safer than I do right now with just my trust Leatherman by my side....

The weather has been very clear today and we have been spared the smoke of the forest fires in California but the forecast says that smoke from California will be blowing our way very soon.... and will be here in force by the weekend...

Sadly the firefighting helicopter that crashed last week contained several people from this area and included some of my sons school friends - very tragic and our thoughts go out to the eleven families who lost loved ones.