At last! A cure that works!

This is it! All you Sisters Country residents that live in fear of woodpeckers pounding holes in the side of your houses, this is a cure that works. Honest!

Don Rowe, long-time resident of Sisters; retired USFS firefighter and technician; master woodcarver; grandfather, has created a cure for woodpeckers doing damage to houses: A life-sized carved and painted pileated woodpecker decoy.

Because pileateds are beautiful, Don decided to add one to his menagerie of bird carvings at his home - never dreaming he was going to end up with a sure-fire method of preventing other real-life and annoying woodpeckers from knocking holes in his home.

Don said, "After I put the pileated up on the side of my house all the woodpeckers in the vicinity took off - and they haven't come back."

To date, not one person who has placed Don's decoy on his house to scare off a woodpecker using the house for a sounding board or would-be home has seen (or heard) it return.

At the moment, Don is busy making pileated decoys and doesn't have time to do much of anything else. One person at Black Butte Ranch - who has been having woodpecker problems for what seems like forever - has ordered three of Don's decoys, one for three sides of his home that have suffered woodpecker damage over the years.

Give Don a call, 541-549-5694 if you have woodpeckers trying to pound their way into your home. It may even work for Sisters' signature woodpecker, the white-headed - a species almost impossible to keep from blasting holes in homes in the forest community.