The cats I can live with. They sit on my windowsill, lick their chops, and give me the evil eye. When I’m not looking they slink across the living room, slide through the bedroom, and pour out the window into the back garden.

No problem.

But the slugs I can definitely do without.  And it looks like a biblical plague of the slithery blighters has descended on my flat.

They leave slimy sluggy tracks across the floor; they try (unsuccessfully, the fools!) to eat my shoes; they pop up in the most unexpected places and make me retch.

It’s a full-on X-rated slug fest round my gaff with delinquent gastropods waving their mocking antennae at me like football hooligans flicking the V.

slug

I’ve had various suggestions. Put on a big pair of boots and play God. But that sounds messy. Scatter slug pellets and/or salt in all directions and watch ‘em writhe. But that’s a bit grim.

More humane folks have suggested saucers of beer.

Now I quite like the idea of pissed slugs breathing their last in a pool of Best Bitter (“yer ma bes mate, you are!”) but what if word gets round?  Free beer!

Cue mega bouts of binge drinking, slug lock-ins, very slow slimy fights over that cutie with the translucent skin …

What eats slugs, asks a friend? I check Wikipedia. Snakes, apparently. And toads. Hmmm. Big, ugly, hissy, and hoppy ain’t no solution to small, slow, slimy and harmless.

I’m at a loss, dear readers, so if any of you out there have the answer let me know.

In the meantime, I take comfort in the knowledge that I’m not alone … The Times reports today that the miserable swamp of a summer has been a bit of a paradise for Limax maximus and his cousins.

Wonder what the collective noun is for slugs?

Related Tags: General, slugs