Dunno....I use it all summer with no problem. They all move along to my neighbors' gardens. (j/k) I have heard but never tested these ideas: string a single clear monofilament --fishing line-- about 3 feet off the ground, around the garden. Deer are apparently freaked out by this 'invisible wall', and won't cross it. 2) surround the garden with a 3 foot wide ring of plain plastic trellis, laid flat on the ground. Deer at least won't cross it, not wanting to chance tangling their hooves in this hazard. Keep us posted if you try these! --Rr

This is a story I told a while back, so mayby you heard it. A long long time ago we had squirrels in our attic. Every one told me they would chew the elec. wires and cause a fire. So they had to go. DH found the opening in the roof overhang and when they came out one morning he blocked it up with screen. As he was putting in the last staple a little head peeked over the edge of the roof. When he left it went to the patch and bumped its head against it several times. Then the second squirrel appeared and they just stared at the patched hole. I felt so bad and he asked me if I wanted him to remove the patch. I told him no, I was afraid they would indeed chew on the wires. That night I was looking trough a magazine I believe (Womens Day), and I came across an ad for a sampler (a embroidered message) It had two squirrels on the top and the message was "Blessed is the Home that Shares it's Shelter". I felt so guilty after that. The hard part is that they mate for life and my neighbor in back caught one of them in a have a heart trap and that was the end of that family. I personally enjoy watching them and decided I can't have everything my way and choose to co-exist.

Rats certainly climb. In California, where I have friends and family, rats are a real problem because of all the fruit trees everywhere. Oranges etc. dropping everywhere for a rats' feast. They call them fruit rats but they are just plain old disgusting rats. They are also called roof rats because they climb and then move into your attic crawl space. When you live in California, you have to have an "exclusion specialist" who comes and seals up every tiny hole and crack into your house. It's a standard part of life out there. Otherwise, the rats move right in with you. GROSS!! I have to say that's why I never put kitchen scraps in my compost--just leaves, grass clippings, weeds and so on. I think (hope) it is too countrified here for rats but we have many other animals I don't want to encourage by feeding. I don't even feed the birds anymore. Seed and suet attract too many uninvited guests.

This post keeps coming back, like the flu during school semesters. I have grown Devil's Trumpet for two years now. (Anyone bother to notice this is was written 3 gardening seasons ago?) I chose it because thorn apples cause a bad trip - hallucinations - more often than death. Didn't work. Squirrels haven't tried it. Then again, squirrels have stopped bothering us. We covered our tomatoes with fruit tree netting and squirted the little suckers unmercifully, when they got under the netting anyway. It was funny. Their natural reaction was to run upward, but the only escape was to run down and out. Soaked little tree rats. I think we tramatized them. They go by our yard over the telephone pole wires, and stare at us, hard, as they go by. One little movement from us has them running for three more yards before they pause. lol Not total triumph though. The squirrels didn't bother our plants all summer (two little diggy spots, but that's easily resolved by adding stones, glass marbles, or rose cane.) Instead, late blight wiped out our tomatoes and are now going for our peppers. I'm originally from South Jersey of "Jersey tomatoes" fame, so I'm passionate about tomatoes. Here it is, August and no more homegrown tomatoes this year. As for worrying about poisoning the critters with thorn apples. I did consider the fall out. IF it killed them (and I assumed they'd take a bite and decide it didn't taste good, so would get sick and hallicinate, teaching them stuff in our garden isn't good), by the time it killed them, it would have digested enough and they would have been too bad looking, so there would be no critters eating it that aren't also invasive to the area. (Starlings and pigeons. Two other cirtters that deserve no fretting about.) The logic of not killing a species that has outgrown its territory eludes me. The same "logic" is used for deer, oppossum, racoons, and a variety of other species that just don't work in a city. Because politicians worry about animal activists, instead, people in the city are in danger from "harmless" animals. Rabies has come back as a problem easily correctible. Cars run into deers on a major city thoroughfare. And squirrels? Well, those suckers destroy roofs, crawl spaces, and wiring when they seek new nesting areas by invadig our homes. All things rectifiable, if animal activists would simply realize, an overflow of critters in a city is bad for the people living there. Not like squirrels are on the endangered species list. If anything - too many. A shame, they are tasty, but shooting in the city has its problems, too. (People worry about invading critters, but not hungry people.) As for not wishing that on a worse enemies - cool. Your life has been good. My worse enemies have caused enough physical damage that I wouldn't mind making them sick and have them hallucinate on thorn apple either. I wouldn't intentionally poison them, but if they were foolish enough to eat one, I wouldn't warn them about the danger until they chewed a couple of times. It's really a matter of degrees on what enemies have done. What's been done to me deserves jail time, at best. There was a day when those enemies would have been killed for their actions. Never underestimate waht "worse enemy" is to some people. Now, don't mind me. Keep arguing back and forth. This post keeps returning because, face it, "Tree Squirrels are Winning." I just hope others learn how we stopped being hassled by them.