For gardeners, the word 'slug' connotes deadly stealth, just like the Blob in the cult SF movie. ​

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To trap the slimy wee beasties, we lay out boards between our rows of vegetables. The slugs crawl under them, sleepy & full after a night of slow savagery in the cabbages. We turn over the boards in the morning, quickly and humanely cut or slice the slugs in half, and dig their nutritious remains back into the soil.

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We don't do this cavalierly; after all, every living thing serves some purpose and contributes to the common good— even slugs. They chew up decaying organic matter and their waste products add to the quality and quantity of humus in our garden soil. But their choice of food sources, namely our precious veggie seedlings, consigns them to failure in the survival of the fittest— or fastest, in this case.

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Pity the poor slug. Oh, kind of. 

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One day while slug-hunting, we suddenly realized that these slimy little pests were actually performing a valuable service for us by giving up their bodies to the soil for the greater good of our garden; and we felt surprisingly grateful. This feeling wasn't mixed with sentimental guilt (oh..., the poor, poor slugs): it felt... well... meaningful.

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In fact, it's often surprising, but working in Nature works on you in small but elemental ways; and working alongside the life in the earth, including the 'pests', can open you to other levels of relationship that aren't motivated by sentimentality, entitlement, greed or aggression.

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So we still sacrifice the slugs in our garden. When we do, we feel apologetic and grateful most of the time. We don't use intermediaries: slug bait, copper ribbon, diatomaceous earth, sawdust, or sunken bowls of beer. We don't chuck our slugs into the garbage bin either,  so that someone else can deal with them. We just cut 'em up & dig 'em in. We don't get them all, but that's OK.

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And so it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut said.

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But if you're still obsessed with completely solving your slug problem, you can try the aforementioned intermediaries; and if they don't work to your satisfaction and you can't stomach cutting up slugs, you can always get a duck.

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