Scott, by "civilized," are you referring to the human neighbors, or the coyotes?
On the matter of fireworks, we're just a stone's throw from the border, so of course everybody has to run down to South Carolina to buy the kinds you can't legally acquire here. Hiss, flash, boom, ooooh, ahhhh; the police really only get involved if somebody gets hurt.
On the matter of the coyotes, they've been in the area for, oh, a good ten years or so. I haven't seen this particular pack, though I might have seen a couple of its members dead on the roads near here. I have heard them howling/yammering back in the woods behind our property on countless occasions, but last night, I heard them on our lot for the first time. Ironically, one of the owners of a property behind us likes to do some target practice back there, and several times we've had neighbors mistakenly report the gunfire to the police as being on our property (I haven't been able to ascertain whether it is still legal to shoot a gun outside in any parts of New Hanover County these days; one deputy seemed to think it wasn't legal anywhere). Lemmee tellya, if I'd had a shotgun last night, there would have been gunfire coming from my back porch, and I probably would have hit my target, too!
