This is a true story with hardly any embellishments…and...

Absolutely nothing to do with pie…cause that would just be gross!

I planted Chrysanthemums!  It’s a lovely thing to do when one wants to pretend to welcome fall. I love fall but she always shows up just a little too early and waits at the curb as I rush around trying to get all my summery things done.  But nevertheless, we greet her each year like good hostesses and we plant cheery Chrysanthemums for her arrival.

 It started so well.  I was even early in my purchase of mums, just to impress her this time around.  But the trouble started a couple days later when I noticed my gorgeous burgundy flowers looking a wee bit sad and dilapidated.  More water didn’t seem to raise their spirits and upon closer inspection I discovered that someone, or something was munching on the leaves.  I ran for the hydrogen peroxide and sprayed them liberally.  The next morning the situation had worsened so I got down to look them in the eye, and then I saw the culprit. A slug! Ugh!  Don’t try to tell me they’re snails!  They’re not, they’re not!  That shell makes a world of difference.  What to do…

Google told me my options.  The first and most gruesome defense - cornmeal.  Put some in a pile near your plants, they said.  The slugs will eat it and then they will explode!  Well, that sounds pleasant, I thought.  I try to practice Buddhism, so blowing up slugs did not feel appropriate and I read on to plan B.  Beer, they said.  I’m not a beer drinker, but I looked in my fridge and found a lovely pale ale from my daughter’s last visit.  I thought, at least I am offering a decent beer and I followed the steps of digging a hole and putting a cup of brew at ground level.  This sounded like a much happier way to go and if I was a slug I think I would appreciate the effort.

I went out the next morning to find my plants further ravaged, but also good news - half a dozen tiny slugs in their beery bier!  I had no remorse on my walk to work.   They died happy, I told myself.  

Ah, but on my return that evening, as I came through the gate and was preparing to discard my catch of the day, I was horrified to find that the slugs had actually thrived on the pale ale and had grown to ten times their original size!  They were hanging out on the edge of the now warm brew, dipping their toes, sipping an occasional sip and more or less having themselves a little hot tub party!  I panicked! What have I created?  I grabbed a stick and scraped them quickly into the tub, (yes, now actively torturing and drowning with my own little hands), lifted it from the ground and ran down the street to the storm drain chanting the well known Buddhist chant of… Gross!  Gross! Groooooss!

 I shuddered all evening at the memory of the monster slugs!  The next morning I pulled myself together, refilled the tub with the icy cold pale ale and left for an outing with a friend.  I regaled him with my slug horror story and I could tell he was skeptical. But upon our return he was able to witness firsthand the now, monster size slugs enjoying the sun and the freshly cleaned hot tub. Feeling a bit nauseous, I made him run down the street to deposit these new behemoths into the storm drain.  How many slugs can one tiny yard have, I whined.  I was losing the battle, my mums were definitely on their last gasp and I decided it was time to throw in the towel on the slug war.

Another gardener friend listened to my tale and laughed at my squeamishness.  Just put out the cornmeal, he said.  "I can’t do it, it’s too cruel!"  Well, you could warn them not to eat it, he offered, and then your conscience would be clear.  I don’t speak slug, I said.  Just talk real slowly and in a low octave and they should be able to understand, he lied.  I was stepping out the following morning, skirting warily around the giant impatiens that I had somehow managed to grow on the opposite side of my doorstep, (this being quite another story as I have stopped giving these plants any form of nourishment at all because they seem to be growing to a man eating size), and saw the sad and sorry state of my now skeletal Chrysanthemums.  Something snapped inside, I have no other excuse.  I ran back into the house and grabbed the cornmeal and with crazy eyes I circled my mums, all the while saying very low and slow, “Dooooon’t eeeeaaaaaat the coooornmeeeeaaal!! It’s Poiiiiisonnnnnnn!"  I then recovered my equilibrium to a degree and went off to work.

When I rounded the corner of my street that evening, I was dismayed to see several parades of ants coming from all directions, from neighbors and neighbor's neighbors, to my very splendid beer and cornmeal picnic!  I went inside feeling foolish and quite outnumbered.  The ‘Old lady who swallowed the fly’ poem leapt to mind.  Defeated, I went to bed.  I would deal with the ant problem in the morning.

I woke up with the plan of pouring baking soda over the cornmeal.  Just a wild idea completely without basis but I refuse to trust google anymore!  I go out armed with my neutralizing agent and am stopped mid-step with horror and disgust.  There are hundreds of slugs rolled onto their backs with their stomachs distended.  It’s a battlefield of dead slugs!  It’s horrific!  I’m dizzy!  I can never again call myself a Buddhist!  I fashion a small white flag, stick it in the ground and walk sadly to work, praying for forgiveness!  And then I worried, all day long, that the birds would now eat the cornmeal stuffed slugs,  they would also explode, and I would arrive home to a yard full of feathers.  I came home and quickly walked past the battlefield, completely averting my eyes, veered nervously around the man eating impatiens, went into my little house and locked the door behind me.

Happy Fall!