In late May I planted salvia, marigolds and a red flower that's supposed to attract butterflies. Red is supposed to be a color of abundance and it turned out that I got an abundance of slugs.
As the leaves were slowly eaten up the brilliant red drained away and everything slowly fell apart.
This is how they looked within two weeks. I wanted to stop the slugs but I couldn't bring myself to kill them the old fashioned way i.e. salt. Sure I was the cruel kid who was fascinated by the physical reaction of spiders drenched in Windex and salty shriveled slugs on the hot driveway. But I'm an adult now. If I'm going to kill a living creature I want it to look as unagonizing as possible. So I stood out in the driveway next to my shriveled plants, tin foil in one hand and full-bodied beer in the other. I popped the cap, took a drink then folded the foil into a bowl shape and poured a third of the bottle inside. I set my make-shift slug trap in the mulch by the flowers and actually watched one slug make a slow U-turn toward the beer once it got a whiff.
Apparently slugs like the yeast in beer. So they slowly slink into the trap and drown. As you can see below, the flowers bounced back wonderfully after the culprits were eliminated. Through the Summer I shared a few more bottles with the garden slugs and every time I did, the plants came back to life. I'm sure their deaths were more painful than I want to admit, but I like to think they went out feeling high as a kite. And I like having a good excuse for drinking while gardening.
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