An Enemy Within
Yuk!
What a horrible experience I had the other night. After spending an enjoyable evening sprawled across the settee watching TV, I decided to have a glass of water before retiring to bed. I opened the kitchen door - turned on the light - and horror of horrors there was one of the world’s biggest Slugs slap bang in the middle of my kitchen floor - A big juicy beast with gigantic ‘horns’ and a tell tale trail of silver in it’s wake.
I spared the mighty Gastropod the Saxo and carried it with Kleenex as far away from the house as possible.
I spent the remainder of the evening checking absolutely everywhere in the kitchen for other slimy unwanted visitors and trying to work out how the initial ‘guest’ had invaded my kitchen.
To be honest, aside from the sensation of ‘Yuk’, I also felt embarrassed. I had visions of the checkout girls in the local Co-Op tapping each other on the shoulder on my next visit and whispering “Hey look, it’s that guy who lives with a herd of Slugs”.
But a little bit of research has revealed that the problem is not quite as uncommon as one might think.
As well as sealing absolutely everywhere in my kitchen, I’ve now got an industrial sized container of Slug Pellets and I’ve set a few ‘Beer Traps’. A ‘Beer Trap’ is just any old reasonably flat vessel containing beer. Apparently Slugs - who love Beer - crawl in, get sloshed and drown. What a way to go - maybe wasteful, but at least it’s less painful for them than have salt sprinkled on their backs!
Further research has also enlightened me that they won’t crawl over copper wire.
As yet, no more Slugs but I’ve spent a lot of time checking the kitchen floor in the middle of the night.
