Has a hungry deer ever made a brunch of your rose garden? Or a cat or dog taken liberties with your lawn? Perhaps you've had a woodpecker bore a hole in your expensive cedar siding. How about ants or spiders making your home theirs?

If any of these scenarios affect you, help is on the way. For cats, dogs, raccoons and possums we recommend a chemical called Bitrex, which is made in Europe, or a similar one made in the USA called Ropel. They taste so bad that no living thing can swallow either. Some anti-freeze manufacturers use Bitrex to prevent animals from drinking their product, thus preventing them from being poisoned. One manufacturer told us that animals eventually will get used to the foul-tasting chemicals, thus negating their effectiveness.

We have an additional idea. Diluted ammonia sprayed onto the lawn and garden is a deterrent. We suggest using all three chemicals in rotation to keep animals away perhaps permanently.

Woodpeckers are a somewhat different problem. You probably do not want to spray your entire home with ammonia or Ropel. We have a better idea. First, clean any food stored in the woodpecker hole. Next, patch it so that the woodpecker has to start over again. Finally, hang a small piece of pork fat in a nearby tree. Pork fat is a favorite woodpecker food. Your woodpecker will take residence in the tree instead of your house.

Ants are actually beneficial to the garden. They eat aphids and other things that are bad for plants. Trouble is sometimes they decide to live inside the house with you instead of in the garden. About a year ago we were introduced to chili powder as an ant deterrent. We were skeptical at first. How much chili powder is needed? Won't the ants go around it? How long will it last? Does it really work? The answers were simple: not much, no, long enough to work and yes. Just a light sprinkling of the rust-colored spice in the path of the ants is all it takes. The ants do not go around the spice they turn around and go back from where they came. The chili powder can be cleaned up a few hours later. The ants don't come back.