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(c) Copyright 2006, Detroit Free Press. All Rights Reserved.

It is a major city in the United States. During the 1960s, it led the nation in locally produced music from homegrown groups. It has always been the nation's first city for automobiles.

But now, Detroit's auto industry is gasping for oxygen. If it dies, so, too, does the United States.

After a recent visit to family in the Motor City, I am worried about what the loss of Ford, GM or Chrysler would mean to all of us who live elsewhere.

Talking to family and friends at a wedding reception was anything but happy. Many retired workers, convinced that further industrial debt could take a toll on their benefits and prevent them from living a normal life, were afraid.

This is not happening to the foreign automakers. It should not be happening to American auto companies. And as the American auto industry suffers continued losses, the consumer's faith in warranties and reliability fades.

There was a time when none of this occurred, a time when Americans bought only American, but obviously that was a time when other countries in the world didn't have the ability to out-produce the United States. In our quest to find cheap labor elsewhere, we have supported other countries becoming more productive, and that has advanced them economically. Therefore, we helped to implement the decline of our own economy.

The Detroit of long ago that I remember was a very different city, with different standards that reflected our American spirit. The best from our colleges were hired by the auto industry as engineers and scientists, designers and thinkers, and sundry others were hired and employed in their offices and on their factory floors associated with the building of automobiles. Steel, coal and other fuel industries, as well as rubber, glass, plastics and a variety of subsidiary manufacturers, all benefited from the building of cars.

As Detroit thrived, so, too, did America. Not anymore. As Detroit now suffers, so do we. Any industry associated with the manufacture, or lack thereof, of American cars and automobile equipment or accessories, will also suffer. And why, may I ask, did we allow this to happen? Was it because we, as Americans, don't care about each other anymore?

The people of Detroit have not failed us; we have failed Detroit. While I was visiting there, it was rare to find people driving foreign cars. Detroiters predominantly drive American-made cars and especially those made in their own state. Detroiters associated with the building of American cars also support workers in other American industries who support them. Not a bad concept. Do we do that for them elsewhere in this country?

Once, a long time ago, I bought a Honda. I drove it to Detroit, and I rightfully was harassed by those who lived and worked there. But I gave them the typical argument. The price of gasoline was too expensive, and if Detroit could build a competitive car I would buy it.

I listened to their arguments, heard their concerns, and when the time came to replace that Honda a few years later, I bought a Ford Taurus. I followed that with the purchase of my first truck, a Ford F-150, and have never regretted it, and still own it.

My youngest daughter has now been looking for her first automobile to purchase and was encouraged to look everywhere. She likes and wants, more than any other car, a Ford Fusion. Hopefully, she will soon own one. Her father is proud of her. Her family in Detroit is proud of her. She is on the right track, even if she doesn't fully understand why.

When we hear complaints about this country, about our failures, about what is wrong with the young people today, how they are inheriting a different world, a different agenda, how they are inheriting a failing society, we need to also ask ourselves why, and ask who created that failing society.

When we buy at the stores that only sell cheap goods made elsewhere, we have only ourselves to blame. When we buy from foreign sources, we have only ourselves to blame. We need each other's help. We need to listen to each other. We need to respond to each other's problems, no matter where we live in this country. If we do not, then we have only ourselves to blame.

Dean O'Hare, former CEO of insurance conglomerate Chubb Corp., estimates dropping $10,000 annually on landscaping in recent years. But that’s not for new plantings, rather just to replace the deer damage inflicted on his 20-acre Far Hills, N.J. estate. Mr. O'Hare tried professional sprayers, and had his entire property fenced in, but even that didn't deter the beasts.

"They jump right over and smile as they jump," says Mr. O'Hare.

Last year, however, he received a flyer from a new Pleasantville, N.Y. company called Nature Technologies Inc., which used a multi-prong deterrent strategy that included a patented ultrasonic device with frequencies purported to sound like a jet engine to deer while being virtually inaudible to humans. With an average initial set-up of $1200 to $1500 and monthly maintenance of $99, the firm's service wasn't cheap. But it promised monthly house calls and money-back guarantee for at least 90 days. After signing up, Mr. O'Hare says: "We made it through the winter in perfect shape."

For years, professional deer deterrent services have remained primarily in the hands of local landscaping outfits and cottage entrepreneurs, many of which employ single-approach strategies whose success can be hit-or-miss. (Deer get under or over fences; sprays get diluted by rainfall or leave unsightly residue on plants.) While a few players such as fencing purveyor Benner's Gardens Inc. in Conshohocken, Pa. and sprayer SavATree in Bedford Hills, N.Y. have branched out regionally and nationally, the unpredictable nature of the work has made it more an industry of Main Street than Wall Street.

But consumer demand for more assured relief, and a willingness to pay for it, is growing as the deer conundrum continues to worsen both in terms of landscaping damage - some $49 million worth annually in the Northeast alone - and on the health front with the spread of Lyme disease. Suburban sprawl has closed land to hunting and milder winters have helped fawn survival. While wildlife experts push for more lasting population control efforts such as sterilization, the immediate problem is worsening. There are an estimated 25 million to 30 million deer roaming the U.S., up from around 500,000 a century ago, and researchers estimate some $2 billion in annual U.S. losses from deer-related damage to land, cars and crops among other things.

That's opened the door for a new, and potentially bigger, breed of player such as Nature Technologies, which is rapidly expanding nationally with a pricey, service-based model that combines some of the old tactics - monthly spraying - with higher-tech offerings such as its ultrasonic device. It expects to post an estimated $10 million in sales in 2006--up from $1.5 million last year and services customers in eight states with plans to expand fully into New England and south of Washington, D.C. in the next year.

Meantime, company, which has venture capital backing, offers its unusual money back guarantee for its systems and says to date, fewer than 2% of its 1400 customers have triggered it due to deer "browsing" and for those that were past the 90-day period, the money was returned anyway.

Certainly, Nature Technologies is young - just two years old - and much remains to be proven on a long-term basis as its systems haven’t yet withstood the test of time or extensive research. Deer adapt readily to deterrents of all types, especially in the winter when food pickings get slim. Auditory devices ranging from ultrasonic ones to gadgets that mimic barking dogs, have been on the market for years but have shown scant long-term value, according to several research reports.

"Deer are very smart animals, and they figure out what is real danger and what is not," says Paul Curtis, an associate professor and extension wildlife specialist at Cornell University. Mr. Curtis, who has studied audible devices-though not Nature Technologies’-says in general, "We haven’t been able to document the efficacy. It's really buyers beware."

Still, Nature Technologies early success with its multi-prong strategy that mixes up deterrents regularly to keep deer on their toes is making an imprint in the industry and with a raft of customers who say it works. "I was ready to plow the garden under," says Judy Tibbets of Darien, Conn. who now uses Nature Technologies at her home property and that of her real estate firm and says she’s "recommended them to everyone." Even longer-established rivals are taking note: "They have a product that seems to work pretty well," says Matt Hough, vice president/product design for Benner's Gardens, which started selling deer fencing in 1992 but has annual revenue of about half Nature Technologies this year.

And the desire for new solutions has garnered interest from outside experts. "Even in my short lifetime, the problem has grown to where we have more deer than ever recorded and we've been keeping records for 125 years," says Brad Roeller, manager of grounds, display gardens and visitation at the not-for-profit Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, N.Y. While he hasn’t studied Nature Technologies’ system, he says: "They seem to be on the right track by keeping the deer off guard.

Feeding opportunity in this market are desperate homeowners who scooped up and landscaped bigger properties during the housing boom and are now increasingly anxious to protect their Hostas and Rhododendron investment from deer intrusion, much the way they would the house from burglars. The inclination is particularly strong among higher income customers whose country homes and land are well-adorned with fertilized, irrigated plantings tasty to deer.

"These people succeeded in everything they've ever done," says Nature Technologies CEO Trevor Price. "And they are getting beat by deer, and they hate that."

Indeed, while Nature Technologies services a wide spectrum of clients the company has consciously courted big-spenders with more lavish properties as well as the horticultural elite. The property manager who oversees Ralph Lauren's Bedford estate in New York is an advisor to the company and uses the technology on Mr. Lauren's property. Dwellers of a multi-unit residential property in Fairfield County, Conn., whose tenants include General Electric Co. CEO Jeffrey Immelt, installed the system to protect their collective driveways. [EDS: confirmed on background from neighbor of Immelts who are using system with them.]

The company donates its services and devices pro bono to various non-profits with extensive gardens, a marketing move that in turn spurs interest among gardening enthusiasts likely to give the company a try at home. Pru Montgomery now pays $250 monthly to protect her half-acre Hastings on Hudson, N.Y. property, which is landscaped with native plants, after noting its success at the rose garden of the Lyndhurst National Trust Historic Site where she is an advisor. "It's expensive," Ms. Montgomery says. "But it's well worth it. We've put a lot into our property. You can't invite people to come see stalks."

Likewise, the 2,000 tulips of Clarence Z. Wurts, former chairman of the Philadelphia Zoo, also came under the protection of Nature Technologies this spring. "Not one was touched," says Mr. Wurts, who'd previously tried hanging Irish Spring soap near plantings (deer seem turned off by the made-for-a-man-but-gentle-enough-for-a-woman scent) and a fence that annoyed his wife. "It's hard to pick flowers with netting over top," he says.

This high-profile courting is not without risk. On the one hand, good buzz among such well-heeled customers is like money in the bank. On the other, there's no room for error -- the visual evidence of a chewed up tulip bed can't be overcome with any amount of marketing spin. Weather, plant growth, and construction all throw deer behavior into upheaval. And the dynamics of cocktail party chatter can be brutal: one high-profile failure and you're toast in the community.

Mr. Price, CEO of Nature Technologies, says notes the onus is on his company to stay one step ahead of the deer. With a heavy emphasis on research and development, the company has filed for patents on a variety of other inventions, including microprocessor chips that use software code to regulate sound strategies based on factors such as time of day, and ultraviolet strobe lights visible to deer but not humans.

Currently, the company employs an ever-changing arsenal of sprays that smell of predators or dying deer on the outer ring of a property. Closer in near high-munching zones, it places its ultrasonic device, the DeerTech 880, which resembles an outdoor speaker. The final round of ammo is sprayed on actual plants in flavors deer find unsavory - such as mint and jalapeno.

To monitor for deer browsing, Nature Technologies sends a staff of technicians (everyone has a college degree and speaks English) around roughly once a month to survey properties and mix up treatments. Technicians are equipped with tablet PCs and broadband IP access cards to log what they see and get info from other field technicians.

Additionally, the company maintains a round-the-clock hotline for "deer sightings" in case customers pull in after dinner and see eyes shining in the headlights. After a spotting is logged, a technician will be there within four hours the next day. In some states, Nature Technologies augment it staff with local landscaping outfits. There's also a research staff monitoring deer behavior with secret video cameras and using Google to get satellite images of where woods and stream are situated in target neighborhoods.

Whatever the future risks, the business is growing at a fast clip with 150 to 200 home visits logged each day. In addition to its money-back guarantee, the company in a few instances also has replaced plants "browsed" by deer during its watch and has given tulip bulbs (a deer delectable) to all its customers to prove its systems work.

In true entrepreneurial tale fashion, the ultrasonic technology originally came from a mason named James Turchioe who was peeved about deer destroying his Armonk, N.Y. property but didn't want an unsightly fence. Having heard that deer don't eat when it's windy because the wind distorts their sense of hearing and smell (which sense predators), he took the same logic to developing the ultrasonic device at the core of Nature Technologies' operation.

After his death in 1997, the patent sat idle for years in his estate until his brother and a childhood friend pulled it from obscurity and raised some money from angel investors. Those investors recruited a new CEO, Mr. Price, who secured two rounds of financing from venture capitalists totaling about $6 million.

Curiously, Mr. Price lives in the trendy urban Manhattan neighborhood of SoHo, nowhere near deer country. A former software executive, he was enticed by the deer deterrent prospects after tomato plants on his roof garden were demolished by an infestation of caterpillars. "I thought, if people are as pissed off about their landscaping as I am about my tomato plants, there's a business here."