Gee whiz. I'm usually pretty nice but your neighbors are seriously immature -- they've got the sensibility of small children who think the world revolves around their whims. If you're not willing to talk to your landlord, then I think in addition to protecting your plants, some other way of getting the critters directly to them is a great idea. Now trellis store bought is expensive, but maybe if you have help, you could get several real thin trim-type pieces of wood together literally like a little ladder, and fix it up so that it will lead ALL the critters directly up to their balcony. They can have the joy of personally feeding critters and cleaning up after them, they'll love it. Then take some pepper spray (nothing that will hurt critters, but which they might hate), I think you could work out some kind of pump extension, and anything that hangs over their balcony so much as 1 mm, spray the thing above you (don't look up -- there's gotta be a way to do it without hurting yourself!) so the animals will avoid it or at least all the part of it anywhere near the outside. Eventually if your neighbors don't figure it out (even if they do, so what), they will realize that for some reason the animals don't eat out of the ones off the edge and they do eat out of the ones on the porch. So they can just put out food ON their porch, since the critters are right there -- rather than hanging off it to try and 'get it to' the critters -- and falling into yours. They get the critters close up, and you get less hanging over you stuff. That doesn't address where they bury things of course, but it might deal with the constant droppings issue. Give the smallest slant to the 'ladder' and the cats can climb it too. I really like critters and feed them myself but wouldn't go about it in the way described, sheesh. PJ

Yep, and the young look the same as the old as well, with the exception of VERY young ones. So if you see a group of them, there's no telling whether they are male, female, young, old, parents, babies, etc. They are my favorite bird to feed with their antics. Joe

I don't remember the store.....but I remember a peanut butter machine when I was a kid, Don't think it was a supermarket....but more of a deli place. I remember it had a window that was completely filled with peanuts in the shell,,,,and they had a roaster and you could buy a brown paper bag full of warm peanuts or get a carton of peanut butter squirted out of a machine which looked a little like a soft serve ice cream machine.... This was more than 60 years ago in northern New Jersey. It was on the south side of Bloomfield ave in Caldwell.... on a corner. Linda C

The neighborhood health food store here has a peanut butter machine. You buy whatever amount of peanuts you want, and then it grinds them into peanut butter. I tend to buy ones that have already been ground up, but they are still very fresh. I would be more interested in making cashew butter, but I would also not put anything sweet with peanuts or peanut butter. I can't eat peanut butter that has even the slightest amount of jelly in it. I can't eat honey roasted peanuts either. Lars