Gardening Pacific Northwest: Slugs and Salal

Field Guide to the Slug

These creatures are an unavoidable part of the west coast garden scene. Though regarded by some as repulsive, slugs are fascinating. Field Guide to the Slug by David George Gordon (Sasquatch Books) is a 64-page paperback that explores the "secret world of slugs and their kin".

Reading this detailed account of slugdom has caused me to shift my focus on slugs. Now I've learned a few intimate details about slugs, I'm not so quick any longer to terminate their lives. Instead, I gather and deposit the slugs and snails I find in nearby woodland to contine their browsing on the fungi, lichens and algae that are among a slug's favored foods. In the wild, our Northwest native slug species help disperse seeds and spores and break down decaying plant matter.

Field Guide to the Slug abounds in amazing facts about these interesting creatures. Just how slow are they? A banana slug would take nine hours and 15 minutes to finish the 100-yard dash, "assuming it didn't stop for a snack along the way."

A slug's jaw is a solid structure that drops "like a guillotine -- to latch onto a lichen, leaf, or whatever. The mouth, bearing as many as 27,000 sharp, backward-pointing teeth, rasps at whatever it is feeding upon. Like sharks, slugs routinely lose and replace their teeth.

Though slow, slugs are remarkably strong. After reading about their awesome sex lives, I'd say they need to be. I'll spare you the titillating details here, but they're well worth the price of the book if you like that sort of thing.

The author notes in his introduction to the book that "Throughout the Northwest, slugs have been cast as mascots of the bizarre" -- in tee-shirts, carvings, kitchen magnets. He closes the introduction with a saying that could very well be another tee-shirt slogan: "To err is human; to slime, sublime."

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Further Slug-related quotes

Land snails used to live in the ocean, but moved ashore. Since nobody told them otherwise, they expected the land to be as wet as the water. We all make mistakes.
-- Will Cuppy: How to Attract the Wombat.

Get up, sweet Slug-a-bed, and see
The Dew bespangling Herbe and Tree.
-- Robert Herrick (1591-1674):
Corinna's Going a-Maying.

Slug control

Field Guide to the Slug includes a section on safe, nontoxic methods of slug control in the garden.

Slug poison

The book offers some important observations on the use of commercial slug and snail baits. Unless they are carefully covered, as in a closed sour cream container with side entry holes for example, the poison -- which often contains some sweet-smelling attractant -- is available to other creatures including birds and small mammals.

Another problem arises in the use of chemical poisons -- "how to safely dispose of slug corpses. While bodies collected from other means can be composted or flushed down the toilet, chemical-laden slugs should be buried away from your garden and any natural sources of water. This will allow most poisons to break down into harmless constituents while preventing other land animals from feeding on tainted flesh."

Slug traps

According to Field Guide to the Slug some of the best slug traps using beer are made from plastic margarine tubs or sour cream type containers, "the depth of which makes it harder for satiated slugs to escape."

Cut a few one-inch square or triangular doors into the container sides and use the lid to deflect rain and prevent dilution of the beer. Position the holes just below the container rim and dig the container into the soil, leaving the cut holes at or just slightly above soil level.

It's the scent of malt and yeast that attracts the voracious creatures. Adding a dash of baker's yeast makes a beer trap more effective. For a less expensive effective substitute for the beer, a mixture of yeast, flour and water can be used. Field Guide to the Slug gives this recipe: "In lieu of beer, an equally potent attractant can be concocted from two tablespoons of flour, one-half teaspoon of brewer's yeast, and one teaspoon of sugar mixed in two cups of warm water."

Removing Slug Slime

You may have noticed a peculiar property of slug slime. It's really difficult to wash off your hands. Field Guide to the Slug explains why: "Slug mucus absorbs water, helping to prevent dehydration -- a serious threat to any terrestrial creature of aquatic ancestry. "This is one reason that slug slime is nearly impossible to wash off. Rubbing your hands under running water only makes it worse; the slime should be wiped off with a dry towel before you wash. Or try rubbing your dry hands together, in much the same way you'd remove rubber cement. The slime can be rolled into a ball and discarded."

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