I THINK I FOUND A (temporary) CURE!

Okay, this is coming from a mechanical engineer so keep that in mind.
I came home from an anniversary dinner tonight to find that the second
patch board I put up over the weekend was now bored thru with a 4"
diameter hole. So I got on a mission. First thing I did was tried to
find something to spray on the boards that might discourage them from
pecking on the wood. Thought about bug spray, overn cleaner, bleach,
but then I got an ah-ha moment. I figure they always like to bore in
old dry wood (such as the gable of my house). So I went in the garage
and found some pruning paint. Basically it's spray tar that never
really dries. So I cut fresh pieces of 3/4" heavy plywood to patch
with. I also wanted to stop them in their tracks so I cut two pieces
of 1/2" square mesh metal screen fence material the same size as the
plywood.

So off I went in the attic, pulled off the other patches and securely
screwed the new plywood with the mesh sandwiched between the plywood
and the siding, with the pruning tar facing the hole. Then I got a
second ah-ha. A few years ago I bought a real high tech dog bark
stopper to cure some neighbor dogs that barked a lot.

http://koolatrononline.stores.yahoo....bark-free.html

They are gone (and thankfully so is the house they tore up) so it was
sitting around doing nothing. I saw it had an audible setting rather
then an ultrasonic, so I put it up in the attic near the gable, facing
the siding. Set the sensitivity way up so if I banged my hand on the
siding, a loud beeeeep emmitted for about twn seconds and then
stopped. It's not loud enough to be heard by the neighbors and if I
hear it at all in the house it will be over in my kid's former
bedrooms (empty nester rebuilding his house). So hopefully if they
bang anywhere on the siding, the beep will sound and possibly scare
them off.

We're planning on redoing the paneling with something like Hardi-
Plank, maybe even this weekend, so this is a temp thing. But I'll be
more then happy to relay my results to the thread as it might help
others.