Once-Born's autoharpist (Sally) had a problem with deer coming down from the Berkeley hills and eating the buds off her roses. She stopped them by putting garlic oil on the buds.

When I was a bit slow in replacing age-weakened crawl space vents, skunks took over my crawl space--and skunks really stink (not their spray--they don't do that in their living space--but their poop). I wanted them out but I didn't think that trapping them, even in the most humane traps, was a good idea, and I didn't want to call pest control and have them gassed (even though they were gassing us). Finally I found the answer in a book in the library: after buying new vents, I ripped out the old and replaced all but one of them then waited until about midnight and replaced it. The book had actually suggested spreading flour in front of the last open vent and checking into the night for footprints going out, then put the last vent in--but as my dogs and I have often encountered skunks before midnight, I figured that my skunks were probably on the same schedule. Hence, no more skunks and no bad karma. --seed