Buy some chicken wire. It's light, comes in a big roll and is fairly easy to shape and form around a melon, leave space for the melon to grow, and just twist tie the wire to your fence or whatever your vines are growing on. Rats eat anything that tastes good. So do mice, skunks, foxes, coyotes, raccoons, groundhogs, and so on...there are very few true carnivores in the US. Most wild animals enjoy a bit of fruit, especially when it has a high water content like a melon.

Michelle, I've always thought Scoop and Izzy had a lot in common. Izzy as a pup reminded me of Scoop as a pup even though different breeds...it's an attitude thing :-) But aren't they great?

We get curculios here - they look just like lady bugs, except that they have long pointy noses that they use to poke holes in small rose buds (which usually droup and die w/o opening). You need to pick off any such dead buds you see, as they are full of curculio eggs. The actual bugs drop straight down when disturbed, so when I am waging anti-curculio wars I get a brown paper bag and go around with it - hold it under the bug before you try to get it, so that if you miss it will drop down right into your bag. Ours are all dark shiny red, so maybe the grey one was something else. Jackie

I've had some problems with 'hoppers and katydids this year. But also a bunch of beautiful giant swallowtail butterflies have seen fit this season to lay HUNDREDS of eggs on the new growth of my trees. Everyday after work, I make the rounds and end up squishing between 1 and 2 dozen eggs. I love the butterflies, but those little birdpoop looking little buggers will munch and munch,and get bigger and bigger until they devour whole leaves, minus the spine, in fortyfive minutes! Befor you call me a truly heartless SOB, consider that I did allow ONE to help itself to Scott's All-You-Can-Eat Thornless Keylime Buffet. I wanted to show the kids the circle of life thing, you know. Not the little orange circles I'd been squishing, but you get the point. That birdpoop looking uglybug would munch and poop all night and then hug a tree branch during the day, incognito. It finally decided to settle down and make its cocoon on the tree. Soon after it gently flies away, it will start laying eggs on my citrus trees, and the circle of death (i mean life!) shall continue. Good luck......Scott the anti-catipillar