Every time I come up my driveway at night and park in front of my house, cottontail rabbits scatter in the headlights. The gardener in me knows this is a bad sign – a very, very bad sign. I don’t have to dig too far back to summon memories of bean plant stumps and holes in the soil where lettuce plants used to be.

Like most things, the rabbit population is cyclical, and the bunnies have been breeding enthusiastically in recent years. Early last spring, they overran my garden, and now, perhaps a dozen generations later, they appear ready to menace again. Obviously, extreme measures are called for.

Last year my strategies included blood meal, pepper spray and a rubber snake that scared me a couple of times when I forgot it was there but appeared not to impress the rabbits. The blood meal was probably the most effective of these methods, but if I used enough to keep the rabbits at bay, my vegetable plants OD’d on nitrogen. I had the leafiest and greenest bean plants you ever did see, but the bean pods were few and far between.

So this year I began researching my fencing options. One of the problems with my garden is that the mesh in the fence, which we put up to keep deer out, is wide enough to let rabbits in. Also, my electric fence, which runs around the top of the deer fence, is too high off the ground to repel rabbits. According to numerous gardening sources, the only fencing solution is 1-inch poultry mesh, known in these parts as chicken wire.

The problem with this kind of rabbit fence, which I considered attaching to the fence that is already there, is that it really should be buried 5 or 6 inches into the ground to keep the rabbits from burrowing in. Too much trouble, I decided, given that I already have a fence there.

A gardening friend who also lives in the country mentioned that she uses hunting scents to keep rabbits out of her garden. Following up on that tip, I stumbled into an ironic retail underworld where organic gardening and game hunting coexist in capitalist harmony.

Nonhunters like me don’t stop to consider that one of the secrets to bagging a deer or other large game animal is not smelling like a human. To make a long story short, the woods are full of hunters who have slathered red fox urine all over themselves to hide their own scent. These handy predator urines, which include coyote, cougar and wolf, are available at hunting supply stores and Web sites.

Meanwhile, gardeners have discovered the utility of predator scents for chasing away rabbits, rodents and squirrels, and have adopted these products for use in the garden. I located a 32-ounce jug of a red fox urine product for $29.95 on the Internet. Some gardeners dab cottonballs in the urine and bury them around the edge of the garden, or hang them from the fence. Others squirt the liquid with a spray bottle.

Buying this stuff off the Internet will probably land me on the NRA mailing list. Or maybe I’ll be receiving catalogs for a camo wardrobe.

I’ve also wondered whether the red fox we occasionally see crossing the road at night will show up in my garden, looking for friends.

But at least I’ll have lettuce.