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The Case of the Reappearing Slug

river85

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Feb 25, 2010
Messages
9
This has been happening for the last four evenings. Before going to sleep I go into the kitchen to turn off the lights and lying inbetween my dishwasher and my bin is a rather large slug. My girlfriend is terrified of them so it falls to me to deal with it. I have this thing where I can't kill stuff unless they irritate me a lot (mosquitos with their high pitched squeal in my ear or when house flies converge around me and try to mate on my knee). So instead of terminating this slug, I pick it up in some wet kitchen paper and put it out of the window. Then go to sleep and forget all about it.

Until the next evening when I go into the kitchen and there is a rather large slug in the same place between dishwasher and bin. As far as I can tell, it is the same slug. Rather long and not too fat and when i look close, it is even a bit cute. My girlfriend is shrieking from the sofa that I have to kill it but if she wants it dead then it falls to her to do the deed I'm afraid! So i put the slug out of the window again and go to sleep.

The next two nights, the slug reappeared looking very happy with itself if I do say so myself, and again it goes out the window in wet kitchen paper. The only way I can think of it coming back in is to gloop up the outside of our house, then up the kitchen window and enter the small window at the top that we leave open so our cats can get out during the day, then proceed to gloop down the window, trail over the kitchen counter top and then down the wall to it's place between dishwasher and bin.

I am pretty certain it's the same slug each time, but I had never heard of such slug behaviour before! Sounds like a lot of effort just to be thrown out again. Surely in the garden there is much more things for the slug to munch on than to be found in the house. I think it's chuckling to itself really.

Now the only thing to do is to see if it makes another visit tonight!
 
Danger Slug: Special Agent! Could it be that slugs are creatures of habit, and this won't have the intelligence to stop returning to the same place over and over again even though it keeps getting chucked out? Like a fly bashing its head on a window pane?
 
There's a thread somewhere on slugs, including giant ones,- with picture links- but I'm not clever enough to direct you to it!

I used to get slugs indoors in the oldish house I used to live in, in the Midlands.They can squeeze themselves through cracks in walls or floor boards, up drain pipes etc (no bones to get in the way!)

I find them disgusting! They totally give me the creeps!
I recently bought slug bait here, and put it down outside the back door. But the large dead /dying bodies made me feel VERY guilty. I'm vegetarian, and call myself an animal lover. I'm now thinking of buying a can of beer and letting them drown instead, as at least they would die happy!
 
Yes, there is a thread somewhere. As to the slug. We have two that reappear every night from about 2-3 o'clock onwards. Every morning there are slime tracks all over the carpet. I love them two. Twice they were stepped on accidentally [like when you come home and cross the living room in the dark or the other time they were out far too early and I didn't expect them to be under the table]. However I think they have survived those incidences. Phew. When we catch them, I sometimes give them half a slice of cucumber each as a treat. To us they are sort of two guys who also live here. They don't do any harm and their tracks make me laugh [because I can see if they were particularly busy]. I often wonder what they eat. I hope they eat carpet mites. I have to hoover or brush the tracks every day but hey, I strongly believe they have their little rights too. ;)

In the winter they sometimes stay away and I worry [yes I am mad, I know]. They are coming in from the air vent next to our gas fire place. One is big and spotty and the other is small and darker. We have photos of them somewhere.
Live and let live I say. To the OP. I like that you take the slug out. I do believe tough that it would go after it's done what it is doing anyway and then come back. Slugs...eh?
 
A few years ago, I kept finding dried out slugs on the carpet at the back of the lounge. A few found their way into the garage as well, and were attempting to get into the house via the kitchen door. I don't know why they so badly wanted to get into the house, as there was nothing inside to attract them.
Anyway, for some time I tried guarding the house by leaving trails of salt around the doorways - but they were persistent little buggers!
In the end, I had to resort to the use of slug pellets, which I spread everywhere outside.

Since then, they haven't been back.
 
Next time take it for a ride to a neighbouring town and put it down in a park.

:lol:
 
Then it will knock on the door six years later and ask "what did you do that for?".

This morning my wife asked me "is that a snail on the window?" There was a snail in the middle of the window about four and a half feet up with no trail coming from any direction. Did someone stick it there, if so why? Otherwise, why was there no trail?
 
Talking of trails...I learnt this from a David Bellamy programme on TV years ago:-
A snail leaves a trail that is like a line of full stops, because it arches its body to drag its shell along; a slug's trail is one long unbroken line.
So now you can all tell the difference! :)
 
Spudrick68 said:
This morning my wife asked me "is that a snail on the window?" There was a snail in the middle of the window about four and a half feet up with no trail coming from any direction. Did someone stick it there, if so why? Otherwise, why was there no trail?

One of those jumping snails you hear so much about.
 
Maybe the returning slugs are following the trail they left the previous night, like a chemical marker? I know ants can do that, but no idea if it applies to slugs.
I'd try finding their entry point and scrubbing on and around it with hot soapy water.

Incidentally I'm the same with not killing things, even flies for the most part. I'd much rather try and guide them outside by opening a couple of windows and letting a breeze do the work. That being said, I will deliberately kill wasps since every time I get stung by one I lose the use of that body part for a week due to swelling :shock:
 
Have we got a "Room 101" thread? My idea of room 101 would be full of large slugs! Give me rats/ snakes/ cockroaches, even worms, in preference to slugs!
 
We too have 'kitchen slugs'. They help themselves from the dog food bowl.
We have a double-glazed back door and no airbricks so I believe they come in through the catflap.

I used to see their trails in the morning but didn't know how big or numerous they were until about 2am one morning when I put the kitchen light on.

There they were, six or more, huge, crowding round the remains of dog's dinner. The dog, a usually brave boxer/Staffie, noticed them too and backed away from his midnight snack. Can't blame him one bit.

I often leave a shallow plastic tray of composting bit beside the back door so they snack on that too. They're welcome in my home, they're doing no harm.

A few hundred years ago we'd have been putting up with lice, mice, bedbugs, rats, beetles, all sorts, without turning a hair. A few entertaining slugs can't hurt. :D
 
But they give me the real eebie jeebies! Is there an equivalent word to "arachnophobia"?
 
I tried to find out but did find Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia - fear of long words. Is that true or has someone made it up? (Sorry to digress).

It is rather boringly called Molluscophobia.
 
Slugs

Around here, we have these:

2898740-Medium_Sized_Banana_Slug_Climbing_Redwood_Tree_Mount_Hermon.jpg


Haven't seen one in the kitchen, yet, though.
 
Well, rather disappointingly, the slug has declined to make a return since the evening before I made the post! Some friends of mine suggested there could be a slug nest in the kitchen, so my girlfriend and me spent saturday totally scrubbing the kitchen clean. I never did see any slug trails with this slug but I also wasn't looking very closely so there could have been.

Since then, there has been little excitement with the exception of a wily frog brought in by one of our four cats, it managed to survive in our house for two days and 2 nights. Then I saw it sitting very calmly in our cats' water bowl when I got up one morning so then I could take it outside. I was glad because I was too much of a wimp to pick it up with my bare hands >.<

Incidentally, the squeals such a tiny creature the size of my thumb can make can be heard when I'm hanging up laundry in the attic and said frog is on the ground floor in the living room.
 
I read a particularly grim book a few years back by Shaun Hutson, entitled "Slugs".

Less a natural history book and more a trashy horror on what can allegedly happen when Slugs get a taste for flesh!

http://www.shaunhutson.com/synopses/syn-slugs.htm

Don't laugh, I know the thought of being attacked by slugs is a bit implausible (I mean how slow do you need to be?!) but apparently they have one tooth-like thing that they saw into flesh with :shock:

It hasn't changed my opinion of slugs much, but whenever I see them I always think "what if...."


Which leads me onto my next point...

Around this time of the year to the end of September we have some kind of slug and snail invasion. It happens when it rains, and they are wierdly attracted to the front of the house. Quite often I'll return home in the dark and reach my front door only for the security lights to flick on to reveal some kind on mollusc-facia on the house. I've counted over 30 of them before now, and that's only the ones I can see!

The only thing I know this slow-moving invasion can hurt is my dog if he eats one (likely. He's truly not fussy!)
:(
 
I was once 'bitten' by my snail, the rasping thingy in its mouth even left marks... awwww.
That snail was called Anatol and I had rescued it from a fridge in Paris where it was waiting to be made into some garlic/butter thing the next day. I kept it for 6 months and then brought it with me to Germany where I found it a German 'friend'. Shortly after, both laid eggs. The friend's eggs hatched in a nursery I made and were put into a nice forest. Anatol however was firing blanks [probably due to his traumatic youth]. Eventually I let the friend go [I think it went at the same time as the snail-lings] and soon I found Anatol dead with its head in the little waterbowl, drowned. Suicide?

I wrote this probably on the snail thread already but who cares...
 
That is the saddest story I've read for ages :(

"Suicide Snail" because Anatol missed his friend.....
 
cheeky381 said:
I read a particularly grim book a few years back by Shaun Hutson, entitled "Slugs".

Less a natural history book and more a trashy horror on what can allegedly happen when Slugs get a taste for flesh!

http://www.shaunhutson.com/synopses/syn-slugs.htm

Don't laugh, I know the thought of being attacked by slugs is a bit implausible (I mean how slow do you need to be?!) but apparently they have one tooth-like thing that they saw into flesh with :shock:

It hasn't changed my opinion of slugs much, but whenever I see them I always think "what if...."(

If you thought the book was bad, you should see the unintentionally hilarious film version.
 
It reminds me of the joke about a snail that goes into a pub and asks for a pint of beer. The barman picks the snail up and throws him out the door. 6 months later, the snail comes back in, goes up to the barman and says, "What did you do that for?"
 
I have some strange affection for slugs.
When I was small, my grandfather hated them and would do his best to eliminate them from the garden. Growing up around this, and being told to kill any I found, I thought it was a perfectly fun little game to skewer them on sticks...

Then one day, when I found a tiny one and was about to stick it... It screamed, and stood up waving tiny tentacles at me. It looked like it was honestly trying to get away. I picked it up, looked at it, and for some reason it dawned on me that it was a baby slug... And was actually kind of cute as it sat on my finger.
I felt bad, and let it go.

I know that it didn't actually scream, and that it must have been some other noise, but for some reason I couldn't bring myself to kill the tiny things any more. I would move those I found into safer parts of the garden and tell them not to come back...

I miss slugs. We don't seem to have any here - only tiny snails.
 
Me, I mostly just put salt on 'em. Lots of salt. :twisted:
 
Mythopoeika said:
Me, I mostly just put salt on 'em. Lots of salt. :twisted:

It improves the taste but you have to be quick unless you like them soupy.
 
Re: the original reappearing slug...

... cat brought it in?
 
Should you see it again, have a little bottle of acrylic paint on hand and dab a dot on its arse-end. At least you'll know if it's the same one....
 
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