The Battle of the Slugs, Continued.

Go back a post or two if you need to, just to catch up and get the background on the slug situation.

But just a quick recap: The beer bowls didn't work. Well, it worked but it didn't really make a dent in our slime population. It wasn't enough. Plus, we were basically just providing free booze to the neighborhood creepy crawlies.

I'd really rather not do poison if I can help it. It's definitely not the first tool I grab in an infestation situation. (See a previous post about rats.) But I've learned to never say never, and sometimes, you've just got to do what you've got to do to take back your garden.

And it was time to take back the garden. I sprinkled it around and it actually smelled good. Let's see what happens, I thought.

Um. The next 24 hours revealed carnage I never thought possible.

So, whatever it is they ingest, causes extra slime trails. Our patio, was a spiderweb of crystalized slime trails.

And.

For some reason (I think it's a conspiracy) they prefer to live out their last moments in the wide-open. As in they come out to the patio (or the middle of the boys football space/net - lots of bald grass spots) to die. And this, mind you, is an extra-oozy, disgusting, writhing death. (I felt bad, really, I did.)

The result was, that we had to implement a "slug-removal squad." Yep. That would be me with a shovel. I have to go around and flick the slimeballs into the bushes before anyone will go outside to do anything. I've been doing this all summer.

We thought the situation was under control. Until the other night, when we had to do another round of chemical warfare. So there I was, the next morning, flicking sluggy critters into the bushes.

Sigh. This is what my life has become.

But then. An amazing thing happened. My three children, who up to this point had been whining and complaining about something or other (for sanity purposes, I stopped listening to the whiney voices sometime last month) banded together.

Somehow, they came up with this system of water and buckets and they worked together....just a minute, let me say that one more time, they worked TOGETHER to clean-up the crystalized slime trails that covered the back yard.

So I did what only a good mother would do. I took that as my cue and slipped into the house, unnoticed. Leaving them collaborating and using their imaginations to fix the backyard.

And it was beautiful.