Click picture to enlarge - Original hosted at Flickr

Along with having a child, the past eight months included a move to an apartment with a backyard. It's almost suburban living in Brooklyn. I have been in upper story apartments in the city for the past thirteen years, so I had forgotten what it means to have land. It means a war on nature. If anyone ever tells you that there are people that live in harmony with nature, tell them to shut up. Nature is an evil beast that must be mowed, trimmed, sprayed, and burnt back or else it will cover you and turn you into compost.

Along with an ongoing battle with squirrels and ants (unrelated, two different fronts), we discovered a slug issue on our patio door the other night. On her way to bed, my wife saw a six inch long slug slug on the patio door. We had noticed holes in the leaves of our basil and sage plants and I now suspected the slimy critters were the culprit.

I had heard that slugs would be attracted to beer (I am!) and that you could entice them to drown themselves with pie tins of lager placed in the garden. I bought some supplies and put them out as we prepared to bbq some chicken. Lauren was joining us for dinner so she watched as I poured out three cans of very, very cheap beer.

After dinner, about an hour into dark, we decided to take a flashlight back to the garden and see if the trap was working. THERE WERE SLUGS EVERYWHERE! Huge ones chasing each other under the parsley. Little ones circling the bark. Loners making their way up or down the brick wall. All of them leaving glittering slime trails as they converged toward the beer. It was horrific--something that you cannot un-see.

Most of them were very large and of the variety Limax maximus, or leopard slug: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limax_maximus/. They aren't even indigenous to the US, having just shown up in a wine cellar in Philly in the 1860's, presumably for the wine, not the intellectual conversation (Zap! Philly zinger!). Because of that and the fact they are eating my crops, I have no qualms in clearing out the slug population of our yard.

Many were just circling the beer pool, but not diving in. I'm not typically squeamish, but I had no desire to pick up a bunch of slugs. I did nudge a few into the drink with a stick. They seemed happy to drown in beer. I mean, there are many, many worse ways to go.

Butn the morning, a total of THIRTY-NINE slugs had met there demise at the BrooklynTrout Beer Garden. One of the trays was empty of beer, either from a leak, or because all the slugs had drank the tub dry in an attempt to escape. The big guy in today's pic was making a staggering get away, but I escorted him back to the full pool.

What's my conclusion to all this? Killing slugs is a new chore I have that I look forward to shoving off to my son some day. While I love the outdoors, nature is gross. Wash your herbs, fruits, and vegetables before eating.