Having a 'Green Thumb,' no longer needs to involve chlorophyllic poisoning, but rather just a little research. I live in the state of Illinois, and our largest city is Chicago, which actually means stinky weed (onion) in Native American Indian. The area where I live is the perfect spot to grow many different types of vegetables, but none as independently as the onion. While I was a freshman in high school I planted a small chive plant in an area around the home where I live, I never watered it, nor did I mulch the area around it. Not only did that plant grow but it thrived. The chives had begun to spread around in ways I couldn't believe. The chives began to take over an area where grass was. By planting the chives an an area where they are naturally indigenous allows them to grow more independant than some other plants or vegetables would grow. Another easy grower for the area where I live would be raspberry and blackberry bushes. These berries grow indigenously in the Wisconsin/Illinois region, but need a bit of help to get started. Initially one needs to provide ample water and sunlight to the bushes until their roots are able to dig deep enough to gather their own water. These bushes are also another pest resistant plant because some of their species are known to have thorns. Onions are a perfect fit in a garden because they are a natural deterrent for herbivorous creatures, if one places onions along the outer edge(s) of a garden it will help prevent theft of your vegetables.

Wow, thanks for all the suggestions, ya'll. The raccoons actually come down the trees into the fenced dog yard when they don't want to walk around the fence. Or, they try to walk on top of the fence, it's chainlink! Or, they drop like paratroopers onto the roof, but they only do thatin the middle of the night, when I'm finally in that really good deep sleep. One night they landed on the roof and ran back and forth over the bedroom, the big dogs running back and forth under the window barking. What gets me is that the garbage cans are on the other end of the house and they can easily go around the fence to get to the food and water. I think they enjoy the chaos. I think it's some sort of raccoon gang ritual, they can't join the club if they don't successfully finish a mission. They crack me up when they move the garbage cans. The cans have locking lids so they can't get into them, but they used to knock them over. I've trained them not to tip them over. I used a dog training method where you put 10-15 pennies in a soda can and rubber band some plastic wrap on top, them set the cans on whatever you want to train the animals not to get on. When they try to get on the trashcans they knock off the soda cans and it makes a big racket. It only took a couple of nights and they stopped knocking the garbage over. It worked soo well that they learned how to move the trashcans without making the soda cans fall over. I tried the soda can thing on the container where I keep the dog and cat food. But this box is only about 18 inches tall and those 'coon figured out how to pick up the soda cans and set them down on the floor without dropping too many. They amaze me. We had lights on motion sensors, but they very quickly learned not to run away from the lights. A funny thing happened one night - My mother-in-law was having diner with us and this happened right outside the dining room window.) One of 'em landed on top of a wide metal cabinet and BAM the light came on, and he tried to scramble away but couldn't get any traction so his little claws just clanged and scrambled to the left and then to the right, and then he tried to jump straight up but flipped off the back instead. It was like the lights came on and the darned 'coon started tap dancing. Now she jokes about how I train raccoons as well dogs. Another funny happened when we were getting the house ready to move into. (The previous tennents only went outside to throw bags of trash in the yard, so the raccoons where used to feasting.) I was here cleaning late one night all alone and went out to have a smoke. Well, a couple minutes after I sat down on the porch some huge creature jumped up on the railing near my head. Well, I screamed and it screamed and I ran for the door and it fell off the porch. That was my first night alone in this house and my first experience with these raccoons. It took us a while to figure out why the raccoons would come to the house when we would go out on the porch. Like I said earlier, the prev tenants only came on the porch to throw bags of garbage into the yard. They did this for years. I guess the raccoons associated the opening of the porch door with food. Some kind of Pavlovian response, huh? So you see, we moved into their neighborhood, it's just taking us a while to learn all the new rules. **Hey Wild4wildlife, I worked at a vet hospital before we moved here, and it's true that deer can jump 6 foot privacy fence. Many times we'd get called out to a client's property because deer would jump the fence. The deer would either have a broken leg from getting caught on the fence OR the deer would be confused on how to get back out of the yard. The strangest was a doe that had gotten into a 2nd story corn crib, without a ladder. The only way she could've gotten up there was by getting on top of a truck and jumping the remaining 4-5 feet into the open door. You know, I thought I left all these wildlife shenanagens behind when I moved out of the country and into the suburbs. Ya'll take care

As far as I can tell, the vast majority of "robber sues homeowner and wins" stories seem to be urban myths. I did study one case in law school where a homeowner was successfully sued, but in that case, he had set up a gun on some sort of automatic trigger connected to the front door of an unoccupied cabin. The court said that this was going too far, taking the chance of killing someone to protect property, rather than life. The basic rule on self-defense is that you have to try to run away rather than use force, if you can do it safely. That basic rule does *not* hold true in your own home. There is no "duty to retreat" in your own home. The other basic rule on self-defense is that you can use only enough force to repel the attack. However, what amount of force is reasonable depends on your duty to retreat. Since you have no duty to retreat inside your home, you can use more force than you would outside your home. As to whether you can use wasp spray as a weapon, I don't know the answer. My best guess would be that if you used it during an attack on the street, the courts would treat it as any other dangerous weapon. If you used it in your home (or car, at least in some states), even if you planned to use it as a weapon, I doubt there would be an issue. The law varies by state. If you want to see what your state thinks about these matters, look up the "castle doctrine," as in "my home is my castle." As a practical matter, I think most people are okay using whatever force they need to protect themselves inside their own homes. And that's even more so for women. Where I could see it getting dicey is if some teenaged kid broke into a house for drug money, having no weapon and thinking the house was unoccupied, tried to run away when he saw someone was home, and the man of the house grabbed him and beat the living s*^t out of the kid. Even then, I'll bet most police officers would tell the kid that he shouldn't have been in the house in the first place. As to whether the man of the house could then be sued, well, of course he could. Some of the castle laws protect people from being sued in these situations, but for the most part, anyone can sue anyone. Can't necessarily win, but can start the suit.

when we had someone try to break into our home the police officers told us the number one thing we could do to help stop that and help them too was put a LOT of outside lights up, the more light around the place the less likely they will hit you, they will go on down to some dark house where they will be less likely to be seen. And also to get a driveway alarm. We have one of those also. It can be set up so that animals will not trigger it but a human or car or anything bigger than a dog would trigger the alarm which is in your home. There are a lot of junk ones out there, we got a very nice one at Northern Tool supply, it is wireless and was extremely easy to put up. We have considered cameras if we did that we would definitely put out signs. You know you can buy fake cameras and the signs to go with them that are just as real looking as a true one. We did not go with motion sensor lights we do not want them to even consider our house, our many outdoor spot lights go on at dusk and stay on. A neighbor down the street had his truck broken into last week, his is one of the dark houses. No one has been back near our house and in our neighborhood homeowners meeting the police used our house as an example of what they wished all of them would be like. It may cost me a little more on my eclectic bill (I have not noticed it) but for the peace of mind it is sure worth it. the driveway alarm we have Chamberlain Wireless Motion Alert System, Model# CWA2000 this one is also a good one Mighty Mule Wireless Driveway Alarm, Model FM231 the fakes Outdoor Fake Dummy Security Camera w/ Blinking Light SECURITY SURVEILLANCE SIGNS the other thing the police officers really strongly advised at the meeting was if you own a navigator GPS unit do NOT leave it or the mount anywhere in the car in fact be sure to clean the windshield so that the suction cup circle is not visible, they look for that, if they see it they know there is one somewhere. They said they are getting such good prices for them at the pawn shops the theft rate has gone nuts even in very high end neighborhoods, since they are likely to have them in their vehicles. I did have a GPS in my vehicle in the drive but it was in the console, of course the main place they would look. I no longer leave it in the vehicle and never use the window mount. Many of the new car dealerships are being hit hard with the majority of theft being the nav units, in the process of course the vehicles are severely damaged. Luckily in our case my husband was up and saw the guy at the glass door trying to get in. He was caught in the neighborhood a little later.