Snail eradication (day 12).

It didn’t end up raining yesterday (so I didn’t get a chance to test my dedication to snailing by snailing in the rain). Today dawned cold and dewy.
Which meant I knew I was going to get some gastropod action.


And indeed, I did. There were slugs aplenty on the moist leaves and blades of grass. Owing to the cold (which my fingers don’t especially care for), I lost a few of them that leapt back to the earthy depths, but a good many found their way to the Soapy Bucket of Merciful Deliverance (the same one I prepared yesterday, when the pickings were slim).
Today, there were a bunch of mid-sized snails out, too, many on the higher leaves of the plants they were on. I’m wondering whether this is temperature related (since on warmer dewy mornings I seem to find more snails at lower altitudes).
We’ll have to start tracking altitudes to see if any stable trends emerge. (And yes, once there is a large enough body of data, we’ll start looking at the trends and making graphs and all that good geeky stuff.)
Today’s take: 249 slugs and snails (roughly 2/3 slugs and 1/3 snails) in 35 minutes.

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Posted in Critters, Environment, Garden, Personal.

2 Comments

  1. You’re still getting quite a number of them. The numbers have dropped from the first few days, but that’s still quite a few. Perhaps look for a source of infestation?

  2. Finding the buggers higher up means your attempts to breed flying gastropods is having some success. Either that or you’ve found another clew about the retaliatory trebuchet: When it’s ready, they’ll capture you, probably on a warm morning when you’re least expecting it, by leaping on you en mass from the tops of the trees. Hundreds and hundreds of the buggers, in a controlled descent, aiming for whichever bit of you isn’t yet covered with their fellow gastropods.
    On the big day, when you’ll have a very personal storm of raining angry snails and slugs, I don’t think a bucket of soapy water will be an effective defence. Nor will a tinfoil hat…

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