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The best animal repellents for gardens include a variety of different scents. You can use predator urine to keep away deer, raccoons, squirrels, and more. The odor will tell the critters that your yard is a dangerous place. Other scents that repel critters are herbs like lavender, geranium, and mint. You can also use hot pepper, garlic, and strong-smelling soap.

If you’re having trouble with your traps, first examine them for flaws that would allow a squirrel to escape easily, such as loose doors or hinges. It’s also important to consider the location of your trap: Place it in areas with higher squirrel traffic, and make sure it’s on a sturdy surface so it can’t wobble or tip (squirrels aren’t likely to walk in a trap that isn’t stable). Lastly, try changing out your bait—in-shell peanuts or peanut butter often work best.

Badgers have a strong sense of smell, so it’s possible you can deter them with strong scents, such as applying citronella oil to the bottom of your fence, adding crushed scotch bonnet peppers sprinkled throughout your garden, or mixing both of these into a solution to spray around your home and garden.

Besides using the best bait for an opossum trap, other things that can attract them to enter include covering the base with soil or leaf litter and placing it along their path of travel near the denning spot. Leave the trap out overnight, as opossums are nocturnal animals, and check the trap daily.