Pete Podurgiel wrote:That's horrible, my condolences ...is there any hope of legal recourse/recompense?
Yeah, after the Cerro Grande fire which destroyed the town of Los Alamos lit for the same reason, now they call them "Prescribed burns." As citizens we need to take the matches away for the US Forest Service. It has been declared a national disaster by uncle Joe. Under the unbearable stress of losing our homebuilt home with a masonry 2600 gallon aquaponics fish pond with five year old Koi, we've frantically filling our forms proving we own the home. That part is done and sent in to FEMA with documentation showing what type of home it was, as it is unrecognizable as a building. Next is personal belongings; family photos, paintings, artwork, furnishings and a brand new jewelry studio which IDouglas Alpenstock wrote:Good god Brian. That's awful, unspeakable, infuriating. I can't imagine how a controlled burn could have gone so horribly wrong.
I just turned 68 and I have lived here on this land since 1973. The elk must have been here all along. I don't know because the first house I built or rebuilt ( that's another story) did not have a good view of our fields on top of the fact that I was young and didn't a lot of early mornings views of anything, hehe. After a divorce from our children's mother then losing the first house I built, moved an old mobile home from down the hill by the Village, to up the hill to near where my parents had just put a prefabricated house at the edge of the forest. After picking a spot with a view with the support of my current wife we immediately cut out one end of 1958 40 foot trailer and install one of the many double pane picture windows I had been collecting as a lifelong scavenger of materials. Two things we noticed quickly was that our little trailer was very near a game trail and that brought a wide variety of wildlife across our picture window view. That is when we realized how vast the population of wild animals the are here in northern New Mexico including a herd of upto 75 elk which frequented the field I previously hadn't seen. On a few occasions those extremely large beasts would come into our yard. As you probably already have seen, elk are as large a horse and equally as gentle. Fences don't affect them all that and our fences while maintained are very old and not all that strong. The one gate we have up dividing the pasture from the larger forested acreage. I don't if this large herd ever used the always open gate or not but, it was clearly evident that 15 feet away the fence was often down and needing repairs. To the south, deep in the forest it became evident why we had to repair fences in certain places.Off topic but I gotta ask - Do you have problems with the elk? I just bought a property with a roaming herd of elk that have been using it. I don't know how many, have just heard about them from the neighbors. I'm 61 years old. Should I be worried? Do I need to do anything to protect myself or my house or my dogs from them? Any other advice for me regarding them? Any and all info welcome. Thanks, Carmen.