Dish soap is one of the best to cut plant oils - it was designed to "cut grease," as all the commercials tell me. Dawn dish soap is an often recommended treatment if you get into poison ivy - immediately washing the area with hot water and the dish soap. I'm sure it will work on oil from peppers as well. As far as the pepper variety, what you described sounds like many hot pepper varieties. Without a picture, it's hard to say and even hard then with a picture. Try looking at seed vendors who sell heirloom seed varieties. Many of the on-line catalog entries for hot peppers will contain a picture of the fruit and a description of the spicy nature of the fruit. FataMorgana

I used to have bird feeders, but not since we have had an active population of black bears. While I like having them around, I don't want to train them to think that our house = food. Although the bears hibernate, they are awake before there are many food sources for seed eaters, and I hate to habituate the birds to my feeders and then have to remove them in early spring. I do want to put out a heated bird bath for winter, though, and may try a suet feeder since about the time I would have to bring in the feeder due to the bears waking up, there would be insects available for the suet eaters. We do have a lot of birds, but they don't spend as much time near the house as they would if we had feeders. I do plant for the birds and often have nests in shrubs near the house, seed eating birds on plants where I've let the seed heads stand, and insect eaters in the shrubbery. Purple martins eat flying bugs, so that is one of the reasons folks put up houses for them. Since you plan to put up bird houses, read up about the requirements for a house that the birds will use, the preferred size openings for different birds, and how best to site them since different types of birds look for different set-ups. Here's some general information on bird houses from the National Wildlife Federation: http://www.nwf.org/How-to-Help/Garden-for-Wildlife/Gardening-Tips/Attracting-Nesting-Birds.aspx The link below is from Cornell University Lab of Ornithology's Project Nest Watch. If you go to the LEARN tab in the upper right part of the page, there are various articles about bird houses and landscaping for bird habitat that you may find useful. Until you have more shrubs or small trees near your feeders for landing spots, you can put a lage tree branch or old Christmas tree in a pot and fill the pot with rocks or gravel to hold it in place. Here is a link that might be useful: Cornell's Project Nest Watch

Lots of animals do like the pepper. If it is squirrels that are eating your melons, the pepper usually repels them. I don't know of many other critters it really repels though. If they are hungry enough or thirsty enough, the pepper won't work on them either. Animals will tolerate pepper on desirable food if they are really hungry or really thirsty. Birds cannot even taste the capsaicin, so if it was birds pecking at the melons, it wouldn't stop them either. To save your melon, you could try slipping a knee-high stocking around it and tying it closed with a twist-tie. The stocking will enlarge as the melon enlarges, so it doesn't impede the growth of the fruit. Some smaller animals are deterred by the stocking. Some bigger ones aren't. Dawn

I sometimes buy suet with hot pepper added. Birds seem fine with it, but the squirrels don't eat it. I'd buy it more often, but only one Agway fairly nearby carries it and I don't always shop there. Claire