I'm writing funny today. It's not a very funny week, but I suspect there is nothing that i can say about Virginia Tech that is new, interesting and/or hasn't already been said better. It's not to be ignored, but I can't see adding to the discussion right now so i'm going to go ahead and post the thing I was going to post a day or so ago and hope that's okay with people. I'm glad to discuss the VT shootings if there's anything that needs discussing, but I don't see how I can help make it clearer or better or any less ugly.




Years ago, I was given a lovely collection of Ogden Nash poetry about animals. One fabulous poem read simply

The Lord in his wisdom made the fly
And then forgot to tell us why.

The collection was a prized possession while I was in Mass General for surgery (note to those looking for something to give someone hospitalized, with a short attention span) and I still treasure so many of his bad (read “good”) rhymes.

Ogden Nash never wrote about the slug, however, as far as I can tell. I think I’m glad, but I sure could have used his wisdom over the years. I live in the Pacific Northwest where there are slugs. Lots of slugs. To paraphrase another fine author (the unfortunately named Wanda Gag) “hundreds of slugs, thousands of slugs, millions and billions and trillions of slugs”. Alas.

And there is no reason for them to exist. None. Nada. Zip. I don’t really CARE what they do, someone and/or something out there does it better and isn’t QUITE AS GROSS. Don’t even TRY convincing me.

Slugs and I have co-existed since I began gardening in California back in the early 80s; I had, for one thing a waist-high garden, built as a sort of experimental garden bed/table so I could work without all the bending and it was fabulous. It not only worked splendidly but the slugs tended to ignore it word did not get out that UP THERE was yummy stuff. I think by the 3d year they’d heard about it, but I had several years of slug-free gardening.

I now live in Seattle and while I started gardening when we moved into Hamster Hill (no, that’s not really the house’s name….really….mostly….I just call it that sometimes in my mind) aka Hedgehog Haven (er, ditto) aka The Shechter/Shiffman Foster Home for Toy Gorillas (and monkeys and orangutans and…) (well yeah) but I never really had to deal with the gross things. I kept watch, and yes, used things on rare occasions to keep them away but they didn’t (mostly) like my garden (heh, mostly) (don’t ask) so we were relatively slug-free.

Now that I DON’T garden, it’s gotten Flat Out Weird. Starting about three years ago, the slugs decided to establish a beachhead. INSIDE OUR HOUSE. We started finding slugs IN our kitchen.

I have never before encountered this problem. They were not coming in from some wet dank area or was our kitchen a wet dank area. They were not coming in because there were gardening supplies or food on the floor of the kitchen. We have no pets, so there was no food. There was no dampness around or NEAR the door. The floor is linoleum. There were no puddles, leaks nearby and I wash the floor regularly so there was not any particular scent trail. Our kitchen is dry and mostly warm. There were no decaying plants nearby and there I’ve run out of any possible “why the slugs are coming in the house” explanations.

This baffled us and while we asked around, everyone’s response was similar to our reaction: “Huh? I’ve never heard of that. Coming inside the house, you say?”

And then it seemed it had stopped. And then it would start again. And stop. I did put diatomaceous earth around the door, inside and out and that did work. The problem is of course the stuff is a) powdery so it washes away, blows away b) is nasty to other animals, which I don’t REALLY care about dammit since the landlady removed the fence that used to keep MOST of them out and I can’t fight her anymore but I have no desire ever to kill any cats, dogs, squirrels, I just don’t want them here in our yard. And c) I didn’t want it tracked in in case we would end up with it on our hands and I wasn’t sure how safe that was. And I had to keep remembering to put more down. And it’s not useful when damp. Heh. Great.

I swore I was going to do something else and didn’t because I kept spacing it out and thinking it was over. It got so bad I would have to be sure to have a flashlight at night (one must cross the kitchen a bit to get to the bathroom) and yes, we’d find them in the morning. But I had noted the suggestion of various folks and had researched stuff on line and was ready. But they’d stopped, right? We’d never know what caused them to…

Last week, Stu came in at midnight saying “I just got rid of two slugs. Again.” And I SWORE this was it.

So I went on line and checked and then whacked my head with my hand, picked up the phone and called that big hardware/gardening center not far from the house, the one I pass all the time on the way to the bread outlet (oh wondrous bread outlet!) and on the weekend Stu came home with (drum roll please) the COPPER TAPE.

It’s really pretty. It’s on a roll, adhesive on one side, not quite the width of duct (quack) tape. It’s thinner than aluminum foil, he says, and tears with your fingers. So he took a length of it and stuck it down across the threshold at the front door, where the gross damn things got it (no holes in the walls, no other way in as far as we can tell, they were getting in through spaces in the front door. This takes WORK, mind you. Determination. We are NOT sure to this DAY, still what started this.

He put a few strips down at the edges of the door. We looked down. “It’s so pretty!” we exclaimed. “Shiny!” sez I.

And we waited. We wondered if we’d hear little tiny swearing. Whether in the morning we’d find little tiny “Unfair” picket signs abandoned by the door. If they’d settle in and wait for the stuff to disappear. Clearly these gross little things had decided we were fair game after all this time.

Last night Stu looked out and reported that we seem to have won our first battle; that there was clear indication that a slug had tried to get it and then left. This morning, again, he could see slime trail. I got up later and at 10 am saw a slug; lying lengthwise across the outside of the door, right up against the copper. I waited an hour and looked again. It was oozing away. VICTORY! An hour later….does anyone pretend to understand this? It had stopped and curled up, perhaps thinking it would try again, later, when it regrouped. I wasn’t up to dealing with it so sent it flying – it’ll be back in a couple days I guess.

BUT THE COPPER WORKS. The barricade of a thin sheet of this copper tape stopped the slug. It’s amazing. Apparently, (and everything I read says “apparently” or “seemingly” or “it appears” or “for some reason” slug slime interacts badly with the “small electrical charge” contained in copper. (who knew there WAS a small electrical charge….) Everyone says it works, not a lot of reason why and I don’t really CARE even if I did just try Google and ask.com for 15 minutes to get an answer to WHY.

Sad though, to think of two grown-up people having major happy dance celebrations and gleefully discussing how fast the little bastards can ooze away, going “nyah-nyah” and having little victory moments over it all, isn’t it?

It works, it works!!!