Cathy Craig wrote, >Mechanical methods are a good line of first defense (like cutting >caterpillars and slugs in half with scissors) and provide food for other >garden inhabitants. You can take out a lot of slugs if you can stay up >beyond 11pm. Works if you live in town in a desert. Doesn't help much if you live 6 miles from the nearest town in the next thing to a rain forest. The iron phosphate bait Cathy mentioned is indeed harmless to mammals and birds--don't know about reptiles--and is not at all attractive to my ferociously omnivorous dogs. It is awfully expensive but I have used 3 boxes so far this season and think I have seen some results. I'm hoping they start putting it up in agricultural quantities and keep checking with the farm supply store. As for ants, I don't think they are a problem for bulbs -- but they are a problem for me when I repot the bulbs from the frames in summer, as I often turn out a pot full of healthy bulbs and stinging ants. Maybe, like bee stings, ant stings cure arthritis? However, I have lost several Cassiopes in the rock garden because ants nested under them and carried the soil away from the roots. They like the dense shelter of the plants during the rainy season. I have not seen any damage from pillbugs, although they are present in the environment in small quantities. Cathy mentioned using a castor oil spray for gophers. Has anybody experimented with dipping bulbs in castor oil before planting them? I keep thinking there MUST be a treatment that will make bulbs unpalatable to burrowing rodents (deer mice and voles, here), and I harbor evil suspicions that the Dutch know about one and won't tell us so that we'll buy new tulips every year. I have tried turpentine, which was recommended to me by a grower in the Midwest (didn't work), and Bitter Limene, a product sold for repelling dogs from chewing things (didn't work). What tulips and crocuses I'd have if I could find a vole repellent that was actually ABSORBED by the bulb and didn't dissipate during winter! In fact, if there is someone out there who has the knowledge and facilities to work on it, I'll give her or him a grant to do it. Jane McGary NW Oregon