Saturday, 06 September 2008
Squelch
I had one of the most unpleasant experiences of my life on Thursday evening. It must have been quite late, and I went to the kitchen to get a drink. It was dark, but I didn't turn the light on because there was a glow from the streetlights outside shining through the window, and I felt I could see well enough by that.
I had, in fact, made my drink, and was walking out of the kitchen when it happened. I trod on something very squidgy that I felt burst under my foot (thank goodness I had socks on). I quickly hopped up and began to ask a question along the lines of "What could Jon have dropped there?" when I recalled that, now that Jon has one of those dustbuster thingies, anything he drops immediately gets zapped.
Then I remembered about the slugs and screamed.
You see, for the past fortnight, some slugs have been managing to find a way into the kitchen at night for a good nose around. We used to have a slug do this when we first moved in, but Jon found the hole and sealed it up, so the slug couldn't get in any more. Jon's been searching the kitchen for the hole that the current slugs are getting in, and he thought he'd blocked that, too, but obviously they're more cunning than he realised.
Yes, I trod on a slug. No, neither of us can work out how they're getting in. I feel really bad about killing the poor creature, but how was I supposed to know it was there? And how do we prevent this from happening again?
Slugs aren't the first creepy-crawlies we've had to evict from our house. We've had flies that know how to get in but not out, but we solved that by growing basil in the house and keeping the kitchen compost bin (for collecting scraps to compost) on the windowsill outside. We've had ants that seems to think there's something very interesting in our front porch, but we solved that with a liberal sprinkling of cinnamon and nutmeg (they apparently can't stand them, and it works amazingly well). But what are we to do about these slugs???
I know salt kills slugs, but I don't really want to do that. I just want to deter them from coming in. The problem is, all the online advice I can find is about keeping slugs out of your garden, not your house. One Website I found states that seaweed and coffee grounds both repel slugs, although how we can use them in the kitchen, I'm not entirely sure. Perhaps copper would be better - another site says that a toxic reaction between the slug's slime and a 2-inch thick (or larger) piece of copper results in an electric shock, which keeps the little blighters away. I'll have to see if Jon can use this info to come up with a slug-proof plan.
Does anyone have suggestions of their own? Let me know!
