I too have been told slugs have a homing instinct, but at least I feel better when I find some and toss them over the wall onto the road. They have to run the gauntlet of the trafic before they get a meal on the back of my work.
Slugs & snails do have very strong homing instincts & were in fact used by the French military, following WW1, to carry messages, in the same way that other armies used carrier pigeons. The pigeons were prone to being eaten by birds of prey & the use of slugs & snails clearly removed this hazard & in the context of WW1 battles, where the front line didn't move for a number of years, they were clearly well suited. However French military planners had not reckoned with the Wehrmacht's blitzkrieg advance, which not only outstripped the slugs & snails carrying warning messages, but also squashed a good many. In short, slugs & snails are responsible for World War Two.
My daughter and I have often wondered why slugs so gallantly cross the road only to meet with a swift demise when the inevitable car squashes them. We now think that these slugs are actually outcasts, sent into exile "across the concrete" after committing some heinous crime against Slugdom itself.
Maybe the following quote from Withnail & I provides the true reason: "These aren't accidents, they're throwing themselves into the road! Gladly! Throwing themselves into the road to escape all this hideousness"
I think we have all had our gardens desimmated by the 'slime balls' this year, I have tried everything to no avail - I now collect the critters and put them in the council recyling compost bin in the hope that they won't find there way back!
I put the slugs in the council recycling bin and the little critters found their way out - under the backdoor and into the cat food bowl. I came down one evening to find a least ten in the cat bowl! Not satisfied with eating my lettuce, beans and cauliflowers. They have taken to eating cat food. What is going on!
It seems I am not alone fighting the snail invasion. My neighbour puts those she finds ina screw top jar and into the refuse sack because she found that when she put them straight into a plastic bag the eat their way out! Gardeners World showed them using coffee grounds, so anyone with a coffee addiction or large family might have the answer, bran is another which I must try when I remember to buy some! I will pay us all to give close attention to empty pots and under seed trays this autumn, they sealed themselves into some pipes which I found earlier in the year, they were jam-packed, so they went to the refuse centre - pipes and all!!!
I'm afraid that there is only one solution to snails. It may not appeal to the sensitive but more humanitarian methods are bound to fail. Even exiling the snails will only result in their tormenting somebody else. I'm afraid that you have to tread on them (ensure that you are wearing suitable footwear - spike heels may be effective but your aim needs to be perfectly accurate). In compensation snails do make a very satisfying crunch.
Throwing them into next doors!! Killing them with salt....how cruel!! I'm with you James....the power of a size 9 boot!! If the slugs and snails are collected up and taken to a killing zone, the resulting "mess" can then be scraped up and put onto the compost heap. A very satisfying form of recycling. No! I am not taking on all the neighbours' slugs and snails, there's plenty here to keep crunching.
after last summer when the evil little critters ate my entire stock of lilies - i'm afraid i went for probably the least humane way of getting rid - i was in the mood for vengeance and went out on nightly killing sprees armed with nought but a torch and a big canister of salt! i too am probably going to hell for decimating the slug population in my garden, but i really don't care!!!!
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The pigeons were prone to being eaten by birds of prey & the use of slugs & snails clearly removed this hazard & in the context of WW1 battles, where the front line didn't move for a number of years, they were clearly well suited.
However French military planners had not reckoned with the Wehrmacht's blitzkrieg advance, which not only outstripped the slugs & snails carrying warning messages, but also squashed a good many.
In short, slugs & snails are responsible for World War Two.
Any takers for this theory??
"These aren't accidents, they're throwing themselves into the road! Gladly!
Throwing themselves into the road to escape all this hideousness"
Gardeners World showed them using coffee grounds, so anyone with a coffee addiction or large family might have the answer, bran is another which I must try when I remember to buy some! I will pay us all to give close attention to empty pots and under seed trays this autumn, they sealed themselves into some pipes which I found earlier in the year, they were jam-packed, so they went to the refuse centre - pipes and all!!!
I'm afraid that you have to tread on them (ensure that you are wearing suitable footwear - spike heels may be effective but your aim needs to be perfectly accurate).
In compensation snails do make a very satisfying crunch.