Hehe. Are slugs even squishable? I go after them with a pair of chopsticks - pick them up and drop them in a tin of soapy water. I find their slime is almost impossible to remove from your hands short of sandblasting. I prefer to make most of my pickable pest bugs go swim with the fishies - so to speak. Maybe I'll start shewering slugs though... It sounds a bit more satisfying :-) I'm not really a bug-a-phobe - it's not easy to be a gardener and be afraid of bugs! I find most bugs, even the bad ones kind of pretty (even slugs have those cool antennae). I'm not bothered at all by the usual bad creepy crawlies: centepedes, bees, wasps. I used to be the run-screaming-away kind of afraid of spiders, but it got to the point where I had to do something about it - I couldn't put shoes on without shining a flashlight in them, gloves had to be stored in plastic bags, and every room I entered had a quick scan around the ceiling for them before I did anything else. Kind of ridiculous! So last year I found a garden spider and let him live in my window unmolested (I called him George). Just knowing he was there behind the blind was pretty bad, and after a month I was able to look at him. Eventually he died, and by that time I was able to watch him spin his web and catch flies, and even get a really close look at him - he was really quite pretty. I'm still not too fond of those grass spiders and their irritating huge webs that form a huge sheet over everything, but they don't make me want to craw out of my skin if they crawl on me anymore. I have a new George outside this year and I visit him every day, I've even brought him a few houseflies I caught. I can always hope he caught any narcissus bulb flies that might have been snooping about! BP

A MIX of bloodmeal and bone meal might maybe keep the deer away.

George (et all) you don't have to have an unattractive garden to have one that deer don't eat in. Deer can be low to high pressure and what they eat will depend on how many and how much habitat is left. There are TONS of things that you can do to deter them. There are lots of plants that can be planted that they won't eat, but like what was already mentioned a starving deer will taste most anything and possibly eat it! I live in a medium to heavy pressure area depending on the season. In years prior I have lost most every hosta in my yard, along with other items like Rhodies and small leaf hollies. I have learned a few things to help prevent deer damage. Stinky plants. Anything with a strong odor will be by passed by deer. The strong odor prevents them from being able to smell the air which is one of the ways they stay alert for danager. There are a lot of commerical "odors" that can be bought and sprayed onto plants. There are also recipes that you can make yourself. Milorganite smells awful it is an organic fertilizer and it is a wonderful deer deterent!!! Predator urines are also good placed around your yard in plastic containers in a manner that would mimic their behavior (i.e. marking a tree here and there around your property) There are sachets with blood meal in them (or you can make your own using muslin sachets) blood meal screams danger to a deer and will help send them out of the yard. There are clips that contain a potent combo of garlic and almost rotten egg. These clips you clip right to the stem of the plant in danger and they do work! In areas of taste there are systemic tablets that you can plant with your new plants. The plant takes the tablet up into its system and when the deer bite it, well it isn't the same sweet flavor they knew and loved. You can make things using garlic, hot pepper and rotten eggs to spray on your plants. Mix it with wilt proof or something similar for extended life. You can also buy premade sprays as well. I am by no means a bambi lover but I am realistic and as more and more land is developed and more and more apex predators are killed off there is nothing left to hunt the deer to keep the populations in check. I will not give up gardening because of the deer I will just work with every possible item to run them off my property. If you make it hard enough for them by assulting their sense of smell and taste they WILL go elsewhere for their meals. I mean they are like us, they want to eat where they food and atmosphere are nice! There is a book called Deer Proofing your yard and Garden that has a lot of information. The site I linked sells products that work great. I have a multi layers of denfense for my garden beds and I have a profusion of flowers and plants growing and looking great. It is the first year in four years that I have hostas! Here is a link that might be useful: Deer Busters

My sympathies, Marie. We have plenty of deer, but there is also hunting pressure, lots of woods, and much else both native and planted for them to eat (there have 4 been hanging out this week in the alfalfa part of our big field) so that they don't often come into the gardens. When we are out of town for a week or more, there is sometimes minor deer damage, and one year we had a doe who must have birthed a fawn within 50 feet of DH's shop. She was hanging out in the gardens around the shop and seemed to like toad lilies and rhodies. When we were outside, she wouldn't leave - just grunted at us - which is why we decided that there must be a fawn somewhere nearby - but after 10 days she disappeared and didn't come back. I wasn't sad to see her go. At the time I mixed a deer deterrent with Wiltpruf so that I wouldn't have to respray vulnerable plants and it seemed to keep her from doing more damage. My in-laws live across town on a slightly more densely populated road (though still not suburban) and have a holly hedge that was denuded winter before last. While the hollies recovered fairly well last summer, they didn't want a repeat, and it is a large enough hedge that it would have bankrupt me to spray the whole thing. Instead I hung bags of Irish Spring soap that my MIL had bought, and put in 6+' stakes in a zig-zag pattern and strung them with the heaviest weight transparent fishing line I could find (perhaps 50 lbs. test?) in something of a loose web 3' to 5' deep and 3 or 4 strands high, as high as I could reach. I had read that since they can't see it readily (especially in the dawn/dusk when they are most active) but run into it, they don't jump it since they are unsure of a clear landing. Other than the stakes, it wasn't hugely visible though it was shiny in the sun, so that might be a cheap alternative to try. There was absolutely no damage to the hedge this winter, and now that it is greening up elsewhere I took it down, but I think in your yard (based on photos) you could probably leave it up year round and just have a gate. Rabbit pellets are a bit smaller and rounder than deer pellets which are a bit more bullet-shaped. Here's a page on animal scat that has a side-by side photo of both.