Saturday morning, two large deer, startled by the sound of the porch door opening, leaped one after another from behind the garbage shed. They rushed across the driveway and joined the herd of eight or so that was feasting on the lawn.

On Thanksgiving, a big bear cub clung to a tree high above a busy local road, photographed by neighbors as drivers underneath sped to dinner. 
 
Last week, we reported multiple sightings of a mountain lion—who’d apparently killed a neighbor’s cat in Kinnelon (www.njmyway.com/content/view/300/77).

A few months back a scarred and angry looking coyote, the color of tree bark and big as a Labrador, skulked by the window stalking a squirrel. Often at dawn and dusk, we hear
yips from the woods across the road. There are some 3,000 coyotes in the state.

Has anyone told our un-tamed neighbors that this is New Jersey? Not a nature preserve, but the wealthy land of supranoburban cul de sacs, crowned with malls, boarded by boardwalks, connected by deer-slaying, SUV-laden highways?  

There is no fence between the thousands of acres of Highlands to the west, and the developments that press against these wooded hills. The more we live with deer, bears, coyotes and maybe even mountain lions, they more they live with us. It’s easier to plunder a pizza box or maul a domestic cat than to hunt down running prey.

The debate over the fate of this wilderness frontier is bubbling again as the New Jersey Highlands Council releases its revised plans for managing the huge tract of undeveloped land (http://tinyurl.com/35ze2rm). Should we be allowed to slice further into the woods, building bigger homes on still larger lots?     

Who would you rather have, as your neighbors?