Goin' Huntin'

I am not a fan of hunting for sport. If you're going to kill something, you'd damn well better eat it. But I do have one exception.

Slugs.

Slugs started appearing in great numbers in the vegetable garden last year. We used to have a couple of ducks and a goose that were penned in the garden, and they certainly took care of the slugs, but they also had their drawbacks. In that they shit everywhere and the goose made this horribly loud rusty-hinge honking sound ALL THE TIME. Hated those things. But since they disappeared, and last summer was particularly wet, the slugs started oozing their way back into the garden, hanging out on the cabbages, eating lettuce, and generally being all slimy and disagreeable.

I had a particularly fun time with them when I was cutting off the potato foliage in the fall. They like to live under plants, and that foliage was so thick, the slugs were having a damned rave under there. I picked up the ones I saw and delivered them to the chickens for a snack. Which works, but also requires me to, well, touch them. Even with gloves on, it kind of squicks me out.

So this year, I have taken to stalking the garden with a jar of salt. All you have to do is sprinkle a little salt on slugs and they dissolve. For real. They literally dissolve into a little puddle of orange goo. It's vaguely disturbing, and yet strangely satisfying. I do this for a few minutes every day, checking around the barn and the blackberries where the weeds grow up and provide cover for the slugs. I haven't yet found any slugs on the vegetables, so I guess it's working.

I wouldn't say it's the thrill of the hunt that compels me to stalk slugs with salt, but the thrill of slug-free lettuce? Definitely compelling.