Technically, slugs are known to science as
gastropods, or 'stomach foots.' Well do they deserve the appellation. The despair of dentists, each slug possesses some 25,000 teeth, which they use most proficiently to rasp off twice their own weight in food each day.
Since they are hermaphrodite, possessing both male and female sexual organs, each slug is capable of laying around 300 eggs. If laid in spring, they hatch within three weeks or so; when laid in fall, they lie dormant overwinter. One expert noted that a single grey garden slug might have 90,000 grandchildren.
Fortunately, they are unlikely to achieve such a populace. Raccoons and skunks relish an unwary slug, as do such predators as frogs and toads, wild birds, many of our smaller snakes and ground beetles. Down on the farm, ducks and poultry are also remarkably efficient at keeping slugs under control.
Slugs expend a remarkable amount of energy creating their all too familiar slimy trails between their daytime hiding places and their nocturnal munchies, which they smell through their tentacles or 'feelers.' They breathe not through a nose, but a
pneumastoma, an opening on the side of the body.
Not content to nosh on ornamental plants as well as vegetables, they may also a menace human health. A 21-year-old Australian man was hospitalized after eating a slug on a dare. The Sydney resident contracted rat lungworm disease--a rare form of meningitis--the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported. It is possible to become infected from unwashed fruit and vegetables, ABC adds. Notwithstanding this, in rural southern Italy slugs are recommended, swallowed live and whole, for gastritis and stomach ulcers.
Not all is to be rejected from the world of gastropods. A banana slug,
Anolimax dolichophallus, named "Sammy,' is the mascot of the University of California at Santa Cruz. And there are SLUGS at the University of Toronto: the Society of Linguistic Undergraduate Studies.
As with much pest and disease control, garden sanitation is the primary aim. Unfortunately, there is always at least one neighbour on the block who is a less than enthusiastic gardener. So it is time to go boldly forth, choose from assorted weapons and mount a sustained campaign against the foe. As Brit writer Roger Lewis so delicately put it, "I rode the Northern Line three stops to Golders Green, crossed over to Hoop Lane and entered the crematorium garden, where the recently dead are sprinkled like slug repellent across the soil."
Homemade solutions are all the rage these days. Handpicking into soapy water or rubbing alcohol, suggests no less an authority than Health Canada out of Ottawa where many a slimy thing dwells. And while trapping under grapefruit halves, melon peel or inverted plastic flowerpots suffices, an all-time favourite is the beer trap. Small dishes, filled with beer, protected by inverted clay flowerpots chocked up on one side with a pebble, are distributed three metres apart. The bibulous slugs, attracted to a free booze-up, crawl in and drown.
Incidentally, to answer the inevitable question of what beer is best, in 1987 Colorado State University Professor Whitney found Kingsbury Malt Beverage, Michelob and Budweiser attracted slugs better than other brands.
Any abrasive substance may also deter slathering slugs. High on the list are wood ashes, eggshells, oyster shells, ground limestone, lava rock and sharp sand. Many a gardener has found solace in copper strips as a repellent. Coffee grounds are claimed poisonous to them--there is a commercial spray of 1% to 2% caffeine approved in some areas--while seaweed mulch is similarly lethal. Diatomaceous earth (silicon dioxide) is claimed to scratch the blighters to death.
Iron phosphate pellets have found favour for several years now, sold under such names as Safer's Snail and Slug Bait. The latest is the nematode
Phasmarhabditis hermaphroditis, sold in Britian as Nemaslug. Discovered by the U.K. government research institute at Bristol, West England, it controls slugs up to 8 cm (about 3-inches) long, with a single application controlling slugs for about 6 weeks at temperatures as low as 5ºC.
William Shakespeare could have grown garlic, mint, chives, sage, fennel, chicory, red cabbage, and red lettuce to resist rasping by those 25,000 teeth. Sunflowers are also said to be resistant.
