Changing colors, dropping temperatures, pumpkin spice lattes: do these mainstays of Fall fill your heart with warmth — or with dread?
“No, no, no. Slugs you are ruining my poetic description of Autumn when the leaves turn from green to gold, tinged with red, blowing in the wind to make a carpet of colour on the ground. Now I have a mouldy apple with three fat slimy slugs slithering over the skin and absorbing the remains of the apple.”
“Stay cool Mrs. Human, we slugs have to eat to survive.”
“But not in my garden on my apples.”
“Would you eat an apple that has fallen from the tree. I don’t think so, humans are fussy. Our little brothers, the worms, have already done the preliminary boring of the apple and now we are eating the remainders. This is the real spirit of Autumn Mrs. Human. My brothers/sisters and I are celebrating our Autumn festival. We have been forced to feed on leaves throughout summer and not all leaves are to our taste. Mrs. Human you even killed some of the slug family by dissolving their bodies with salt. Would you like to dissolve?”
“Of course not, but I do not thrive on my plants with their beautiful flowers. You completely devoured my gallardia, there were only a few stalks left.”
“We don’t like stalks Mrs. Human. They are dry and brittle, no juice or soft parts: Nothing better than a nice thick juicy leaf, especially if it is slug friendly. We like parsley most of all and hostas, that is a feast for us. Now autumn has arrived, the leafy season has gone and we are celebrating our Autumn festival aren’t we boys/girls. It is apple harvest time, when the apples are tired from hanging on the trees and bounce to the ground where we are waiting.”
“This is all very well, but we humans also eat apples and even make pies and tarts with them. I did not plant my apple tree for a slug Autumn festival.”
“Oh, come on Mrs. Human, you don’t eat the apples that fall from the tree. They might have a brown soft spot on their skin. Yummy that is our favourite part. We can really squeeze into the apple and savour every part of its flesh. Isn’t it so boys/girls?”
“Yes boss of course. Autumn is the time of year that we all look forward to – munch, munch.”
“So do not gobble the food, eat with dignity, we are slugs and not humans.”
“Excuse me, what was that last remark?”
“Mrs. Human have you ever watched a human eating an apple. He kills it, hatches away with the things called teeth and murders it by biting large lumps out of its flesh.”
“So you want to tell me that slugs don’t have teeth.”
“Of course we have teeth, 14,000 of them in all, but they are fine and dainty. We do not chop our food, we absorb it. So enough talk, I have an apple to deal with. There are four of our kind waiting to take over when we are finished.”
“You are not going to eat the complete apple?”
“We share our food Mrs. Human: besides there is another apple just around the corner that left the tree, so I think I will slime my way over to that apple. Did you plant any strawberries this year Mrs. Human? We slugs love strawberries. They are so nice and juicy.”
“No I did not plant strawberries. I decided to stop planting strawberries as the last time the slugs ate them all.”
“Oh, I see. Never mind apples are OK. What are you doing with all those apples you are collecting in that basket Mrs. Human?”
“They are for human consumption, not for slugs. Don’t worry, I will leave the bruised apples for you.”
“Thankyou Mrs. Human, you are so kind. Did you hear fellow slugs. The remaining apples are for us. ”
And I left the Autumn in my garden, accompanied by the munching sounds of millions of slug teeth as they devoured the apples that no-one really wants. They seem to be the garbage people of my garden.
“And Mrs. Human, see you again next year some time in spring. We will be keeping our feelers crossed for a nice wet Spring. Don’t forget to plant the parsley and look after the hostas.”
You have to love them I suppose, I hope we have a nice dry warm Spring and I will not plant parsley. I will buy it at the supermarket.
Chronicles of an Anglo Swiss 
I really enjoy how you bring these creatures to life. Alas – after treading on one in bare feet as a child – I have had a lifelong loathing of slugs 🙂
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They are not my favourites, but we had an especially super sluggy Summer this year. It seems the best way to get rid of them is what I have now been doing. Remove them, and throw them as far away a possible, they do not return.
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My grandad used to leave out bowls of beer. He always said that ‘Yes, they drowned, but they drowned happy’ 😀
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I have never done the beer thing. We never have beer in the house, although I could easily organise some. I just wonder what to do with the slugs afterwards.
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I never asked what he did with them 😀
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Slugs must be really a problen in Europe. I am having issues with millions of these locust.
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Have never seen a locust. This year is a slug year. We had a lot of rain and they thrive on it. I am slowly becoming an expert on how to live with slugs.
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Slugs give me the shivers. Thankfully none in my neighborhood. But the live and let live tone of your piece, when not dissolving them with salt, will help me keep my shivers to myself and chalk them up to autumnal chill. As they say. You cannot make an omelet with out breaking a few eggs. Or a garden without dissolving a few…..Oh never mind 🙂
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We moved into our village about 15 years ago. It is out in the country. We have two small gardens and I soon learnt if you cannot beat them, then join them. I got used to spiders and they just hang around. Mice never bothered me and they don’t come into the houses and then we have slugs. At first I thought “yuck” but then I started to think how to get rid of them. The salt battle is not so nice and you have piles of slime all over the lawn afterwards. When I picked up my first slug and threw him out of the garden I was not happy, but now throw about 10 slugs a day and don’t even think about it. I seem to have got used to it.
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Our garden is plagued with slugs, too. They would be more tolerable if the neighborhood cats didn’t also use our garden as a litterbox. The double whammy is a bit much.
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We don’t have a big problem with cats, although we have two at the moment. It is a slug year, too damp, but now that the cooler days are coming there are not so many.
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Guess the positive side is that they make good compost for the next year… wouldn’t be so bad if you got to enjoy a flourishing garden, but if they destroy everything, it’s not so good 😦
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We have had the garden refurbished. Slowly I have got rid of the slug friendly plants, to narrow the damage. I now only plant stuff that slugs do not interest. I have two large hosta beds. The attack the green-white striped leaves, but we have a sort with large green leave and they leave them alone. I am slowly becoming a slug expert.
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ok, how did you write a story that left me loving a slug?? Thanks for leaving them the bad apples 🙂
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There is good in everything I suppose, but it took me a long while to find the positive side of a slug. They are compost experts. They are a good weapon if you have a neighbour you do not like. Just throw them in the right direction and you have a sort of satisfied feeling inside.
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In the battle of Mrs. Angloswiss V. Slugs, it’s Slug 1, Mrs. Angloswiss 0. On the up side, many of our least loved creatures of the slimy kind are nature’s cleanup crew. I expect them to clean up me in the end, too.
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They won’t clean me up, there will only be a pile of ashes left, if I don’t have them sprinkled over my garden or in the local river. So I will win eventually.
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Great conversation with the slugs! We gave up trying to grow hostas years ago. Parsley sometimes seems to survive though. Maybe they don’t like the flat-leaved sort as much as the curled ones?
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I have so many hostas that the slugs do not really make a great impression on them. Just a few holes here and there.
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The bane of a gardeners life. LOL
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You said it.
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I thought my garden was the only one that looked like “Tremors”! 😀
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In every garden there is a dark secret somewhere.
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Ewwwwww!!!!!
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They were exactly the words of Mr. Swiss when he saw my price suspicious still life photo. He also added that he will not be reading that blog (but he did all the same).
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You have helped me feel better about slugs. We had a very dry summer so they weren’t around my front porch as much, but last week when I reached for the recycle container, which is kept outside, wouldn’t you know the one inch I would choose to lift it by was occupied by a slug. I actually screamed a little. But then I looked at it and said hi, and carried the container from another side, only after checking it for his mate.
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You were lucky with slugs this year. We had a damp Summer and warm so idea for slugs. Actually your household slug in the container was a well behaved slug. He was doing what he is supposed to do. compostering.
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We are plagued by crane flies. Hundreds are flying erratically up and down my patio door, trying to get in. My 80 year old neighbour tried to shoo some out of her bedroom , by climbing on a chair and flapping a cloth. She fell off and had to call me to go and find a nice, strong man to pick her up. That’s a bit difficult because we are all old and decrepit in our neighbourhood. Still, they ( crane flies ) only live for about a fortnight so I’ll take them over slugs.
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oh my slugs and slugs just like the stink bugs plaguing us here drive me batty
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