Slugs and PBR

Well it's gardening season and luckily we have Jessica here with us for awhile. She is a better gardener than I, and has currently taken up the good fight against those voracious slimy pillagers of bulbs and broad leaf plants: slugs. In the past I have been known to throw up my hands and buy a bottle of "Deadline" which ends the slug problem, but probably isn't worth the guilt associated with using such a nasty product. Last week while I was at work J dug up the garden and planted some romaine starts. Organic gardener that she is, she picked out and slew sixty seven slugs in a space that measures maybe 6x12 feet; then she made a beer trap to capture the ones she missed. This was mostly great news! I mean, wow, 67 slugs! But it wasn't great that she used my favorite beer to make the beer trap: a nice cold Widmer's Hefeweizen given over to slugs?

So today I picked up a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon, which cost a mere 57 cents per can, about half the price of a Hefeweizen. This beer is very popular among the young and hip; it has a panache that means it shows up on the drink lists of some of the coolest restaurants in Portland. There are 24 cans in the case, so it is probably going to last a while. It will be cheaper than a bottle of Deadline. I hope the slugs appreciate it. I hope they don't mind all of the foam that appeared when I poured it (see picture above). If they are young and hip I guess it'll work great.

If you are interested you should go to this OSU website to find a ton of interesting info on slugs (including the fact that a speeding slug moves at about the rate of a grocery line.) And ONLY if you are not faint-of-heart, and are TOTALLY up for a bizarre and erotic account of slug courtship, check this out. It's pretty much an X-rated nature video, narrated in the stuffy British accent that I so love. Don't say I didn't warn you.