Composting Conundrum II

I'm feeling a little guilty and could use some moral direction today.

I believe firmly in composting. It's not that we waste a lot of food but, with six people in our house, we do have a lot of food scraps - banana, apple and orange peels, stems and such from fresh vegetables, and other odds and ends. We empty our compost bucket outside once every few days.


Our outside bin is an open air type, which we chose specifically for our location. (That's a photo of it from last summer when it was first built.) Living in the mountains, we have a lot of wild life. When we first moved in, a bear broke into our "bear-proof" garbage corral. Heck, we even have a squirrel who ate through the lid of our plastic trash can. So most of the plastic composting bins available just wouldn't cut it for our needs. The animals would destroy them.

We decided if we can't beat them, we'd let them help. Super Uncle created a three-sided open bin, built on the side of a hill, to throw scraps into. The animals would have free access. If they went mulling through it, then at least they were helping us by turning it.

Thus far we haven't had any issues. The deer stay away from it (possibly because we throw hair in there from our bathroom compost). The fox pokes around once in awhile. We had a regular bear visitor last summer, but again, I never saw him eating from the compost -- he much preferred to destroy our trash cans.

So.......all that said, this week a bear attacked a llama in our neighborhood. (Yes, it does feel very funny to type that sentence, but hey, we live in the mountains, stuff like that really happens.) Now we're getting "gentle reminders" from our HOA. Stuff like,

"This could have easily happened to you, your pets or children there are a few people who are throwing table scraps out for the wild life, leaving smelly trash out and now we have 2 separate bears to deal with a black one and this brown one none of them have human fear. Living here on our mountain is a privilege because we get to witness the wild life but when we deliberately attract them to us we are planning a sure death for these wonderful animals who share their mountain with us humans. As responsible people we should know that by not doing the above we don't put the bears, mountain lions at risk."

What's a green bean to do? I don't want to throw our scraps in the garbage and send them to the landfill to create more methane gas. On the other hand I don't want to endanger neighborhood pets and children (which probably more important) or threaten the animals themselves. Okay, and I got this really cool bamboo compost bucket for my birthday so I could finally retire the old plastic ice cream container I've used for the last two years.
Anyway... I was thinking that vermicomposting might be an option. We don't have a basement or a garage though. The only spot I can think of is the laundry room. Does vermicomposting smell? I'll have to research that since I'd hate for my laundry to smell like compost.

The other idea I'm keen on right now is pigs. From what I can understand though, it seems like pigs are an April to September thing in this area as you don't want to have them outside in the winter. So that wouldn't solve my table scrap issue the rest of the year, but I'm still thinking of them for other reasons (very locally grown, organic meat). I think I have a lot of convincing to do before that happens though.

So any other ideas? Advice? What would you do about the composting?