A Summer of Slugs.

We remind ourselves all of the time that slugs are better than mosquitoes. Yes, they are gross and ugly and leave a nasty trail of slime and ooze behind them wherever they go, but all in all, they are pretty harmless.  You just don't ever want to go barefoot in the back garden at night or morning. Or maybe ever. Just in case.

Slugs are a novelty for our American visitors, especially the ones that hail from the Midwest. The climate in Minnesota is a good one for mosquitoes, not slugs. So when our cousins from Apple Valley came to visit the first week of summer break, we of course had a BBQ. This BBQ stretched into the late evening hours. And then the slugs came out.

It was funny, at first. To see a big, fat, slimy slug trailing ooze across the patio. The teenagers laughed, and my kids remembered that not everyone has slugs in their garden. However, when our slimy intruder invited his siblings, grandparents, descendants and best buddies, it stopped being funny.

I went out to the patio one night after everyone went to bed to cover the grill and straighten the patio. I'm glad I remembered to turn on the light, because there were at least fifty oozy invaders having an after-party. Had I stepped in the wrong place at the wrong time, I would have brought a whole new meaning to the word "busted."

We'd never had them like this before. What once had been an occasional slug in the garden, had turned into a full-fledged slug infestation. We didn't have much time to worry about it, the same day our guests left us to go on to find more excitement in Paris, we headed off on our own holiday. As a last minute attempt to make a dent in the slug slime, I poured a can of beer into two bowls and placed them strategically in the garden. By strategic I mean, easy to climb into, hopefully not so easy to climb out when that buzz takes effect.

We came home a week later, and to my surprise, it worked. I probably had twenty drowned enemies in both bowls. Yuck. If I thought the living slimeballs were bad, the drowned, fermented, decomposing ones were worse. But one thing was sure, the population had dwindled. I patted myself on the back for a job well-done.

I filled the bowls again (new ones, of course) and went for Round 2. And while I hated to waste the beer, I felt ok with it morally. Yes, I was intentionally killing a living creature, but from the infestee's perspective, it had to be a heck of a good way to go. It's not like I was dumping poison everywhere. Beer bowls in place, we sat outside one evening after dinner. And actually had fun watching the grotesque creatures hone in on the beer like it was a beacon, calling them home. They fell in, and lolled around and got clearly, stinking drunk. By the time we called it a night, there were at least twenty drunk slugs.

And the next morning, I went out to deal with the carnage...and they were gone. As in not in the bowl. I assumed they were probably tucked in their little sluggy beds somewhere with a very big hangover. If our intent was to open the most popular slug saloon in town, then we succeeded.

It was time to consider alternatives. My children were threatening a slug strike. As in, refusing to play  in the backyard if we didn't get the slug situation under control.  My husband was threatening a patio strike, as in, it was too gross to eat dinner on the patio knowing that there were slugs lurking everywhere...waiting. It was the beginning of the summer...I already faced long, dark days ahead of me...and to think...without a backyard...without a patio.

We were approaching desperate times, it was time to take back our garden.