Another cool, dewy morning today as I went out to pick gastropods. The wet grass brushing against my bare legs got at least some of that moisture from the slugs stretched along the blades.
Tomorrow morning I’m going to remember to put on jeans before I go out snailing.
There was still room in the Soapy Bucket of Merciful Deliverance that I used yesterday and the day before. As a method of gastropod dispatch, the SBMD seems to be a lot less resource-intensive than the bucket o’ salt, not to mention less slimy. Plus, since I’m pouring out the water and drowned gastropods onto the compost pile, I’m not wasting any of their precious nutrients.
As was the case yesterday, my fingers were quite cold and there was a significant population of mid-sized snails at relatively high altitude on the plants. Still too few data for me to be ready to call it a trend, but now I’m paying closer attention to snail altitude during the picking. I’m pretty sure it’s not an artifact of my colder-weather picking, as I spent a good bit of this morning’s foray crouched close to the ground.
I (and my fingers) look forward to a warm, dewy morning for comparison purposes.
Today’s take: 167 slugs and snails (roughly half and half) in 35 minutes.
The phrase is “precious bodily fluids”… Which reminds me: If you want to be a proper mad scientist, then besides selecting for (breeding) large nasty indestructible waterproof superglue slimeing flying gastropods, you should also be living in an extinct volcano with a retractable roof on a remote tropical island patrolled by the results of your gastropod breeding experiments. And you need to have a white cat. That’s really important. You can’t be a proper mad scientist without a white cat.
Actually, a white cat is only required for an evil mastermind. Mad scientists have a much wider range to choose from, and can substitute exotic bed warmers, lab assistants or self-transformation/mutation for having a pet.