It's winter and I finally have enough time on my hands to participate with this site, and the subject of squirrels is dear to my heart, so here's my 2 cents. I have sometimes gotten control of squirrels that were already feeding on fruit trees by spreading tangle trap over stretch wrap about 4' up the trunk and pulling up sagging branches with string. At other sites this has failed although I have found squirrel tails stuck in the goo. Because I manage so many small orchards I have found that what works on one site may fail at another. This is a sad fact that often escapes the reasoning displayed on sites like this. You can never assume that if something works for you it will always work elsewhere. Nor can you assume that the behavior of any species of wildlife will be the same at one site as another. I was glad to read the discussion about the actual heartlessness of Havaheart traps. If you use them to relocate them at least admit it is for your own sake and not the animal- there's nothing wrong with this in itself. Of course once you know why it is illegal it would be irresponsible not to humanely kill the animal. Squirrels die very quickly when submerged in water. I would not kill a raccoon this way however, I just can't stand how long the process takes for this wonderful and terrible pest. My raccoons recieve a single pellit from a 1,000 fps target gun just above the spot between their eyes. A properly placed shot will send them into convulsions and very rapid and merciful death. wish this site had spell check

I was wondering if your internships offer any kind of stipend.

A large portion of the patented plants here in the US have been bred rather than produced from sports, etc. If I had to guess, I'd guess that 85% or more are the results of intentional breeding efforts. Lots of professional plant breeders/hybridizers/growers have fairly large operations, where hundreds or thousands of plants are produced, evaluated, and narrowed down to just a few individual plants that are later introduced into the trade. Lots of money, time, and effort are sometimes represented by a patented plant. Personally, I think I would be fine with the US laws being changed to allow for private/non-commercial vegetative propagation of patented plants. I think it's pretty commonly done already, and most people that would do it then are already doing it now. I still think it's a good idea to know what the law is, now. I think very few people really understand the US laws regarding plant patents, PVRs, or the other more unusual plant-related protections...not to mention the trade-name/trademark issues.

Hi all, Thanks for the replies. In answer to some of the points raised: I have no interest in trying to get any money back. I'm really just concerned about this threat of his. In principle, (and I'm a pretty highly principled person), I want to exercise my right to post a truthful review. The review that is up now is the replacement of my original post. I tried to keep it simple, and to reflect that this is "my opinion" because the legal implications for defamation seem to hinge on this. It's okay to present information as your opinion, but not as fact. Presenting facts is where you can get into trouble because the truthfulness of those can be debated in court. So it's okay to say, "This was the worst book I've ever read." But it isn't okay to say, "This author stole whole passages from another author," unless you want to defend that statement in court. I live in Texas and the state IS suffering from a drought. Many lakes are very affected, some not at all, which is why I had an extensive phone conversation with him prior to making arrangements. He assured me the lake level was fantastic and we wouldn't have any issues (I guess the fact that the boat dock stood on dry land escaped his memory). One of our favorite lakes, LBJ, is dam controlled so that hasn't been affected by the drought. Another beautiful lake, Lake Travis, is at least 70 FEET below normal, and means many lakefront homes are no longer lakefront, but there are many public boat docks where you can easily launch a boat --which in fact is what we did when we left this guy's place early to salvage our 4th of July holiday. The property owner HAS seen the new review, and still wants me to remove it. I haven't bothered to respond to his last email, and don't intend to. Thanks for pointing out this man's bullying behavior. Somehow that hadn't registered with me, but as soon as I read it here it resonated. I'm going to just sit tight right now and relax a bit. I truly don't want to have to spend money defending this, but I'm leaving the review up. Thanks to forboystoo for finding my original post, which I'll keep in my file just in case. Thank you to everyone for chiming in and sharing pertinent info. I'll keep you all posted!