I've seen the hedgehog clearing the bits up after my nightly curtails ...
I have at least four hedgehogs in my garden but they never touch slugs. Probably fed too well by us. Would you eat a slug if your were offered a biscuit instead?
Mother Nature don't straight lines, Broken moulds in a grand design, We look a mess but we're doing fine, We're card carrying lifelong members of the Union Of Different Kinds.
... The theory is that they can't find their way back over more than 20m, but even if they can it should take them a while!
I read somewhere they can travel half a mile in a night so you might just be inconveniencing them a tickle!
They might be able to travel that distance but it's the ability to find their way back to where they were that apparently ('apparently') is disrupted. I can't remember where I read it but it sounded convincing. And I guess if they do make it back but it takes them all night, at least they're not eating my courgettes!
Ok, this is snails not slugs and I don't know how dis/similar they are in their ability to return home, but this refers to research that came up with the 20m I had heard of
Lately I have been disposing them off in the bin. Lots of them around, quite big ones too, so can't squish them anymore.
I think that's what I'll be doing. Pick them up wherever I can, pop them in a container and then into the bin. Thanks for the reply.
Mother Nature don't straight lines, Broken moulds in a grand design, We look a mess but we're doing fine, We're card carrying lifelong members of the Union Of Different Kinds.
I leave the big black ones and their cousins the big red ones because they mainly eat dead vegetation and smaller slugs and it the smaller ones that eat growing plants.
Starting from last night and over the next week, I'm going to watch what the slugs do when 'relocated'. Last night's batch was placed (instead of the usual hurled) on the far side of the road. Some just made for the verge while the majority set off smartly up the road. None tried to get back across the road towards the garden. After 15 minutes they had gone literally a few inches, which would mean them hoofing it a bit to do 1km overnight.
Not vastly scientific and I have no way of knowing what they do when I stop watching but for me interesting all the same.
A couple of years back I marked a few snail shells before putting them in the garden waste so I could see if they reappeared in the garden. Of dozens, I only ever found one had climbed out and got back to munching. Most, if not all, the slugs that I chuck in the garden waste bin seem to stay there until it gets emptied. There must be enough to eat in there to keep them happy!
They may well have an instinct to get back to where they were, but I'm not convinced how strong that instinct is or how quickly/often it kicks in.
Posts
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/may/16/snails-homing-instinct-overcome-move-20-metres-away
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Not vastly scientific and I have no way of knowing what they do when I stop watching but for me interesting all the same.
They may well have an instinct to get back to where they were, but I'm not convinced how strong that instinct is or how quickly/often it kicks in.