Bijou for breakfast?

Stories like this make me nervous about letting my little dog out in the backyard after dark. Bijou isn't much bigger than the squirrels around here; she'd make a tasty snack to a big predator (spare me the jokes about teeny-tiny little dogs... Bijou isn't like other teeny-tiny yippy-yappy dogs, she is totally sweet and friendly and lovable). And that golf course in the story isn't that far from my house. I could easily walk there. I won't, of course... certainly not now.

Des Moines seems to be a haven for wildlife... on my way home from SoulFire practice tonight, there was a deer trotting around in one of the main intersections. I waited until it had figured out that it needed to get OFF the street and onto the grass, then I made my turn. Deer are like overgrown rats here. They are literally everywhere and they have very little fear of people. Why should they? Not too long after we moved here in the mid 90s, an elderly man was attacked and nearly killed in a grocery store parking lot by an enraged buck during the rut season.

I've seen a coyote trotting up my street more than once, and there are gazillions of raccoons in this neighborhood... and our house is squarely in the urban middle of Des Moines.