Drunken Slugfest

 

Marilyn Horan

Drunken Slugfest

            I spent a lot of money on beer last summer.  At first I started with higher end Sam Adams, but because of the growing expense of my habit, I wound up buying no-name suds in Rite Aid or 40 ounce bottles at the local bodegas.  It got so addictive that I sometimes went for beer runs twice in one day, and even at night when the only places open were 24 hour stores.  My husband Frank was disgusted by my obsession, telling me that our Brooklyn back yard smelled like a brewery. He would see me with a bottle in my hand and shake his head, asking, “You’re not at it again, are you?”  I would not, could not, stop.  Sometimes I’d sneak out around midnight, thinking Frank was asleep, but he always knew where I had been and what I had been doing by the smell of alcohol on me.  Sure I was hurt when he turned his back on me in bed, but as any junkie knows, the monkey on your back often sleeps between you and your loved one. Had my addiction been to drinking alcohol I might have understood, but to catching and killing slugs and snails?

            It began in late May when I put my six spathiphyllum plants, also called peace lilies, in a shady part of the backyard for their annual summer vacation.  About a month later, I noticed that these plants were being ravaged by some voracious critter.  A little research in a couple of garden books revealed that the culprits were, in fact, the slugs and snails that slithered around on my brick and wooden surfaces.  They flourished last year because of the excessive spring and summer rain.  The gardener’s guides mentioned that they also ate basil and hostas, and sure enough, my basil was being decimated and my hostas were holey.  My nature-loving attitude took exception when it came to these gastropods—literally stomachs with feet--and so began my four-month murderous rampage against my plant destroyers.  This new bloodthirsty goal made my heart race, sprang me up from bed each morning, and kept me prowling my front and back yards late at night. A neighbor of mine had her entire garden destroyed by slugs (Limax maximus) and snails (Helix aspersa), and I was determined that it wouldn’t happen to mine.

            Some people suggested pouring salt on the slugs. I thought that cruel.  Watching ugly snake-like animals writhe in pain was not a thrill for me.  I may be a murderer, but I’m not a sadist, and so I followed the most recommended and successful method—sinking plant saucers about 12 inches in diameter and 2 inches deep into the soil and then filling them with beer, the gastropods’ favorite beverage. The first morning I went to check my traps and was delighted in a perverse way when I saw the saucers crowded with huge dead slugs.  They were stuffed in like sardines and were about the size of those fish, if not bigger.  In fact, the traps looked like koi ponds at feeding time.

            I began with three saucers of brewski, but soon increased the traps to about 20, thus the purchases of cases and cases of beer.  I started using pieces from our dinnerware set as snares, to which my husband reacted:  “I hope you don’t think we’re going to be eating out of those again.”  I reminded him that he ate escargot, and pointed out a fine, fat specimen in a saucer.  No response.

            Thanks to the Internet and my gardening books, there is little I now don’t know

 about slugs and snails. Their stomachs release slime so that they can slide toward food, protection, and one another. Watching mollusk mating is like viewing porno, due to the prolonged writhing, the ectoplasm secreted, and the enormous phalluses, sometimes six times the length of the slugs themselves. They are also hermaphroditic and exchange sperm through their male organs. Sometimes during mating, the penises that originate on the sides of their heads right behind a nose-like hole, get too entwined and must be chewed off in a process called apophallation.  This leaves the gastropods only female, reproductively speaking.  In the absence of a mate, a slug can impregnate itself and produce offspring, with, of course, the exception of those who have undergone the apophallation. They will also eat the corpses of their own kind. They can stretch their bodies up to twenty times their length to squeeze through a tiny hole to get to food.  A factoid on a Snapple cap revealed that they also have teeth.

            As with any addiction, I got more involved, and the beer traps were no longer exciting enough.  I needed more. The horticultural books revealed that slugs like to feed at night and one can easily, with the help of a flashlight, pick them off and kill them--mano a mano.  So my habit became nocturnal and personal.  Sometimes I’d even get out of bed in the middle of the night to check my traps and shine a light on my hostas hoping for just one more hit, just one more big, juicy one before I could sleep.

             I perfected the tools needed for this search and destroy mission and experienced stirrings of primitive savagery every time I grasped a munching slug and killed it.

                                                                                                               

Long rubber gloves insured that I wouldn’t be in contact with any of the slug-goo. A good flashlight was necessary to spot the dastards eating a hosta, or sliming its way to a trap. A set of tongs provided distance, and the electric thrill I felt while holding a trembling bugger by these steel pincers is the closest I’ll ever come to blood lust. I also needed a plastic pail filled with hot water and ingredients guaranteed to kill: liquid soap or bleach, or both. One time I made the mistake of skimping on the soap, considering all the money I spent on beer, and, as I was harvesting my ensnared slimers, one climbed out of the bucket and was slipping across the handle, just as I was about to grab it and move it to another trap. I screamed so loud that Frank stuck his head out the upstairs window to ask if I was okay.  Finally, I needed a hat so that, heaven forbid, if a slug fell on me, I would not have to tear off my clothes and run shrieking into the shower.           

            Now that I had a bucket of slugs that had met a sudsy chlorinated death or a beery demise, how should I dispose of the bodies?  At first, I would drain the saucer or pail and throw the slugs into the garbage, but that took a stomach far stronger than mine.  The liquid in the bucket became viscous due to the slime released from the buggers after their bingeing on brew, making the entire liquid gelatinous with little white squiggles from those of the dead who had exploded.  So then I flushed them down the bathroom bowl with the unfortunate result that I could no longer use the toilet without images of an escaped slug seeking shelter on or in me.  The final solution was to tote the sloshing bucket down the street, late at night and dump my catch into the sewer.  One time I counted 156 of the beasts as they slid down the grate on the corner of my block, a number

that I will forever remember, like my top bowling score—testament to my perseverance and skill.

            But slugs and snails die out with the cold weather and their eggs hatch the next year.  The huge ones that I caught at the beginning of my quest were rare in late September and I found that, more often than not, the slugs I was capturing were young and small, some even embryonic--but even they liked a yeasty brew. With the advent of fall, other terrors appeared in the yard after dark and sometimes I would just drop everything and run into the house.  Once I saw possums, pink with hairless tails and that kept me indoors a couple of nights. Fall brought eerie winds and a ghostly presence, and the smell of incipient decay made me tense, and sometimes sent me running to the comfort of the sofa and television.  It was time to move my plants and me inside.

            Since my spathiphyllum served as breeding grounds for the slivey toves, I had to remove the plants from their containers, wash all traces of dirt off them, sterilize the pots, and replant with store bought soil.  They are back in my house and have shown their appreciation for my efforts by growing large and green and often sending up white spikes—flags, not of surrender, but of victory. I intend to protect them and all my other garden plants the same way this summer, but with less beer and more economical and ecological methods to stave off slugs: copper bands around the plants to shock the creatures, diatomaceous earth to dry them out, better yard sanitation, a different type of mulch, and earlier intervention.  I’m sure Frank will be happier, so will my garden, and, whether he admits it or not, I believe Frank will never again order escargot.  But if he ever                                                  does, I will shudder, wait until my revulsion has passed, and remind him later that lips that have tasted gastropods will never taste mine.