More than mice, the biggest vermin in North Jersey suburbia when I lived there was deer. Those domesticated rats with antlers ate shrubs and bushes with impunity since the local RINOs who wouldn’t let me bow hunt them. If a pack of feral cats attacked them I’d cheer.
I’m old enough I actually remember when this area (S Indiana) had virtually no deer. It didn’t take me long to realize I hated them as well. Why?
1. I love to garden. Deer love to eat my gardens.
2. The tick scourge followed them in under a decade, no one will ever change my mind that white tailed deer are the underlying reason for enormous tick populations.
I used to have a friend that was a Dept of Resources Forrester. He showed me a trail cam picture of a deer and I asked him why it had bunches of grapes hanging from its face. He said look closer—-they were clusters of ticks all swollen to the size of grapes!!!😳 They walk around all summer like that dropping off the swollen females that lay then hatch hundreds of eggs each.
I call whitetail deer Tick Factories.