Eight, eight, the burning hate
So I'm told it is neither possible nor desirable to eliminate slugs from one's garden. Slugs provide food for birds and hedgehogs, thus completing the glorious circle of life. One must aim only to keep them away from those plants that one desires to protect. Well, in my brand new, struggling garden, I want to protect each and every fragile little leaf, so until someone bio-engineers slugs to eat only weeds*, I'm going to need to eliminate.
Which is why I'm so proud of my new little slug trap. Eight, people. Eight grey, green, greasy slugs sank to their yeasty death last night. Look on my works, ye slimeballs, and despair!
And anyway I have cats. It's only right for me to discourage birds from hanging around my garden.
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* Why hasn't anyone done this? It would be perfect. Slugs eat weeds, birds eat slugs, all is well. Someone in a lab should be working on this right now.
15 comments:
*pulls out slug-engineering utensils*
---X
Screw the circle of life, man, way to kill 'em. I've got a slug/snail problem too. I was told to put a container with beer into the ground. I got 4 the first day, but none afterwards. I even tried moving it around.
Tell the slugs about the on-strike snails in Chile, maybe they'll go there to find meaningful (i.e. slimy) work.
Not sure how they'd cross the ocean, dude. Offering to buy them passage seems a little extreme.
Omar, did you refresh the beer? Apparently after a couple of days it repels them, rather than attracting. If it repelled them from the entire garden, that would be fine, but it's not quite that potent. I'll let you know how the yeast thing works out. Death to slimy beasties! Death, I say!
No, I didn't try refreshing. Neither of us drinks beer, so it seemed weird to purchase it just for killing slimy creatures (when I tried it before, I stole a can from my parents' house).
Same here. Get some yeast (as in for baking bread) and put it in water. That's what worked last night, and I have high hopes it'll work again. No need to buy unnecessary beer; yeast comes in small packets. Much more sensible, although I would have quite liked to think of the slugs going merrily to a drunken death.
Yeah, we get eeeenormous slugs, and plenty of them, up here. Beer definitely works, I've lured many to a drunken death - and yes, I refreshed the beer. I used Bud Lite, the slugs didn't seem to mind :>
Drunken slugs. Serious comic potential there.
Garden slugs are nothing though. You have not experienced true "Eeewww, Slug!" until you've had the wits scared right out of you by a banana slug in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Those things are as big as rabbits. I swear.
Rabbit sized slugs?
Happy trails to youuuuuuuu....
I'm w/ Jam. You should farm them and start your own herbal pharmaceutical company based on slug snot.
Hmm. Cate refers to "drunken slugs" and no one mentions seeing one disguised as a homo sapiens male.
Must be a US-South phenomenon.
Er... I agree, drunken men can bear a striking resemblance to slugs - slimy, disgusting, lacking in subtlety of expression - but I'm not sure I'm with you, Jam. I'll choose to believe you're being Southern, not that I'm being dof*.
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* Dof=dumb in Afrikaans. Pronounced like "off" with a D in front, not like "doff" as in "doff your hat", which sounds entirely different. A great word.
That was pretty much the extent of what I had in mind. I had no clear, well-defined picture equating drunken slugs and male human parallels. More like a mental riff, maybe a harmonic of "drunken slob." Or something.
And I was afraid I might be dof because if someone asked me how to pronounce "doff" I'd have said it's like "off" with a d in front. So I checked an online pronunciation key (I really, really fear I've moved into Unhealthy territory with my affection for all things Google) and found customary + alternate "o" sounds listed for both words. So maybe I'm okay, though unable to properly pronounce certain words. I'll blame it on my twang-infused midwest US upbringing.
When you say "doff your hat" would the o be an ŏ sound?
Oh dear, I was afeard this would happen. Er. I have no idea what that squiggly o sound is (nor how you type it). I say "doff" like "don" or "dog". I say "dof" more like, well, that's the problem, I can't think of an English equivalent. Let's say: take the first syllable of "awful" (pronounced in proper BBC fashion, no drawl or twang please) and speed it up a bit. So not "dawf", but "dof". Er. I hope that helps.
Helps, yes. And it does seem like it would be a great word. I might start tossing it out in conversations, see if anyone reacts. :)
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