Beer n' Pie Tins

I think that all of the regular readers of my blog know that Ryan and I don't drink. We have never consumed even one drop of any kind of liquor--and neither of us intend to start doing so any time soon. So, when I asked Ryan to pick up the cheapest beer at the grocery store on Saturday, you can imagine his reaction.

Let me give a little background: a few weeks ago, I noticed that something was chomping holes through the big, beautiful leaves in our garden. I don't have time for a 24-hour garden surveillance--and in the times I'd been out weeding or watching the kids, I hadn't seen anything that could make the culprit list. I did notice, however, that the leaves closer to the dirt were those with the most missing. It made sense that the attack was not aerial, but rather executed from the ground. The only thing that came to mind were slugs. Ooey, gooey, sticky, slimy little slugs. Gross.

At this point, I was determined to rid our garden of the gloppy little creatures. Not wanting to go immediately for a chemical pesticide, I thought about my options. My sister-in-law told me that her dad used to send the kids out with sticks after it rained. They were to spear as many slugs as possible. Well, my kids and sticks don't mix well right now. Plus, I don't know if I could convince them to spear a slug. Then, I remembered something I had been told when we first planted our garden: slugs love beer. Why not give it a try?

So, Ryan brought a six-pack of Coors Light out of the grocery store, (inspite of his youthful looks, he didn't get carded), as well as a six-pack of pot pie sized aluminum pie tins. When the girls saw the silver cans, they asked what kind of soda it was. Our response? It's not soda--it's pesticide. That's the only reason those cans were in our possession--so we felt that was an honest answer for our kids.

That night, after the girls were asleep, we snuck out to the garden to lay our traps. We dug small holes, put the pie tins in, and then filled our four traps with 2 cans of beer. (The other 4 cans now reside on the top shelf in the shed--right next to the Miracle-Gro.) Yesterday, Ryan came in from the backyard with a report of "mass carnage." Turns out slugs really do like beer. We caught 25-30 slugs in our intoxicating mini-pools. We decided to leave them for one more night just in case a few more slugs would like to take a sip. I haven't gone out to check them yet today--I hope they're full of slugs for Ryan to throw away after work!

In the end, I'd say our experiment was a success. And, hopefully, the little boogers don't come back.