There's a war waging in my garden. And it's an unfair war because there's only one of me on my side and there are gobs and gobs of them on their side. They really are such wretched creatures, don't you think? You know who they are, don't you? Why, they're slugs of course! And they ruin everything! Well, not everything but they ruin lots and lots of things.
In the past, my system of defense against slugs consisted of me noticing the merciless mutilation of a plant and screaming "I hate you!" and running inside. That didn't work very well. Sometimes I would see an actual slug and I would pick it up and whip it as far as I could into the street, letting the tires of a car do my dirty work. I've heard lots of people do that. In all honesty, though, my system of defense was rather ineffective.
Not so anymore. Not so at all. A few days ago, I saw that my irises were looking unbelievably shredded and it was totally not okay with me. Totally not okay. My irises are dangerously close to my new vegetable beds—the beds filled mostly with plants I'm growing from seed—and we all know what a few slugs could do to a buffet of baby leaflets. So one night at dusk, I went out searching for the little bastards in action. I tip-toed in my flip-flops and pajamas and I could not believe what I saw! On each poor, innocent little iris plant, there were at least a dozen of the offenders, violently sucking and slurping away. I looked around some more—on the ground, in the grass, under the weeds—and that's when I saw a hefty trail of slime, and a line of slugs in all shapes and sizes, following each other to the feast. It was a slug superhighway. I stormed inside, bounded into the garage, and grabbed the sharpest, meanest, toughest shovel I had and…
Wait. Are you suddenly feeling worried? Are you beginning to think I'm not at all the girl I seemed to be? Are you wondering if you shouldn't visit here anymore? Well, maybe it's best if I don't tell you. Maybe it's too gory. Maybe the scene was too brutal. Maybe…
Alright, I'll tell you. But don't say I didn't warn you!
Okay, so, I took the sharpest, meanest, toughest shovel I had and I started scraping each slug off of each iris. As they fell to the ground, one by slimy one, I chopped them—SLAM!— right in half with the shovel. Then I went over to the superhighway and got the rest of them. All of them. And there were a lot of them. I won't even tell you the final number. But I assure you I did it as quickly and humanely as possible. I didn't want the slugs to suffer. I may have muttered "Tell your friends" under my breath but I swear to you I wasn't enjoying myself in the slightest. And do you know what? The next night I only saw three. And last night I only saw one. Maybe that's all of them, then. Maybe the carnage is finally over.
Hopefully.
