Monday, May 08, 2006
Gastropod attack!
If you plant it, they will come.
Much of my life has been spent in the battle against the gastropods. First in the Willamette Valley in Oregon, and now in the Santa Clara valley down in California. With the salt shaker, the boot heel and even the methaldehyde pellet, I have fought long and hard. And the snails are still winning.
Actually, I've always been kind of fascinated by snails. Growing up, all we had were slugs. Huge, orangish slugh, the standard tale of which was that they were big enough for the kids to ride on, but slugs none the less. They die, they dessicate, and they disappear, leaving nothing behind. Snails, on the other hand, were something a little different - we saw sea snails at the beach, and we saw a few garden snails at our uncle's in the city, but the idea of a slug with a shell on its back was a bit... foreign and therefore interesting.
My move to California and first attempts at gardening here were met with enough snail generated destruction to rapidly turn my fascination to a desire for genocide. No matter if these kind of snails are supposedly the edible french kind of snails - they crawl out of the bushes and eat everything. My wife (at that time my girlfriend) once lived in an apartment complex completely landscaped in ivy - instead of grass lawns, they had ivy. And in that ivy lived the most massive army of snails either of us has ever seen until this very day - it was literally impossible to walk up the path to her door after dark without experiencing the sickening ( yet somehow satisfying ) crunch of a snail or two underfoot. I don't know what they fed on. I don't know why they reproduced. I do think that my neighbors have somehow managed to recreate those nearly ideal snail conditions in their front yards.
I've got snails bad. Not so much towards the middle of my city lot, but at the edges. Maybe they live in the bushes by day and maraude by night. Whatever the case, no primrose is safe - no ligularia will be left unturned. Even the (supposedly poisonous) brugmansias are riddled with holes. And heaven help my if I ever want to plant a hosta. The only thing to do short of spreading methaldehyde pellets on my neighbors property seems to be to cut them off at the entrances. A line of defense in the form of some liquid snail poison product seems to be the only really workable solution. At least it's not the pellets which could get picked up by a passing dog. And it does work remarkably well and fast - there are little piles of snail shells on the borders now. I'd like to think they serve as a warning.
Meanwhile, those I find in the homeland, I drop-kick into the street. It's not efficient, but it is definitely satisfying.
Much of my life has been spent in the battle against the gastropods. First in the Willamette Valley in Oregon, and now in the Santa Clara valley down in California. With the salt shaker, the boot heel and even the methaldehyde pellet, I have fought long and hard. And the snails are still winning.
Actually, I've always been kind of fascinated by snails. Growing up, all we had were slugs. Huge, orangish slugh, the standard tale of which was that they were big enough for the kids to ride on, but slugs none the less. They die, they dessicate, and they disappear, leaving nothing behind. Snails, on the other hand, were something a little different - we saw sea snails at the beach, and we saw a few garden snails at our uncle's in the city, but the idea of a slug with a shell on its back was a bit... foreign and therefore interesting.
My move to California and first attempts at gardening here were met with enough snail generated destruction to rapidly turn my fascination to a desire for genocide. No matter if these kind of snails are supposedly the edible french kind of snails - they crawl out of the bushes and eat everything. My wife (at that time my girlfriend) once lived in an apartment complex completely landscaped in ivy - instead of grass lawns, they had ivy. And in that ivy lived the most massive army of snails either of us has ever seen until this very day - it was literally impossible to walk up the path to her door after dark without experiencing the sickening ( yet somehow satisfying ) crunch of a snail or two underfoot. I don't know what they fed on. I don't know why they reproduced. I do think that my neighbors have somehow managed to recreate those nearly ideal snail conditions in their front yards.
I've got snails bad. Not so much towards the middle of my city lot, but at the edges. Maybe they live in the bushes by day and maraude by night. Whatever the case, no primrose is safe - no ligularia will be left unturned. Even the (supposedly poisonous) brugmansias are riddled with holes. And heaven help my if I ever want to plant a hosta. The only thing to do short of spreading methaldehyde pellets on my neighbors property seems to be to cut them off at the entrances. A line of defense in the form of some liquid snail poison product seems to be the only really workable solution. At least it's not the pellets which could get picked up by a passing dog. And it does work remarkably well and fast - there are little piles of snail shells on the borders now. I'd like to think they serve as a warning.
Meanwhile, those I find in the homeland, I drop-kick into the street. It's not efficient, but it is definitely satisfying.
