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Dear Cecil:
Is it true that if you pour salt on garden slugs they will
dehydrate ... and scream? --Listener, KING radio,
Seattle
Dear Listener:
Cecil loves fielding calls on the radio, because
they enable him to keep his finger on the throbbing pulsebeat of
America, disgusting though that experience can occasionally be.
Take the subject of regional vermin, for instance. In an era of
national homogenization it is amazing to discover the rich variety
of crawling things that infests the different corners of the U.S.
There are the legendary palmetto bugs of Florida, the killer
mosquitoes of Minnesota, and now the giant slugs of Seattle.
This
last one in particular has been a real eye-opener. Previously I had
always thought of Seattle as charming--but no more. Now I know
that beneath those mountains and trees there lies a seething
chamber of horrors.
True, there are slugs in other parts of the
country. But they are nothing compared to the Seattle variety,
which thrives in the region's damp climate. The Seattle slugs (and
boy, wouldn't that make a great name for a baseball team?) can be
as much as four to five inches long, three-quarters of an inch in
diameter, and a ghastly brownish-white in color. Hordes of these
creatures can descend on your garden and eat all your lettuce
overnight. They may turn up in your driveway, your flower box,
even--yuck--your basement, leaving a telltale trail of slime
behind. Some say that slugs are a leading cause of death in
Seattle, owing to the fact that so many people are grossed out of
existence. A few slugs even grow up to become cartoonists for
famous newspapers, increasing their power to wreak havoc a
thousandfold.
But enough of this scare talk. It's true that slugs
will dehydrate if you pour salt on them, although I must say that
the thought of standing there watching while the slug shrivels up
seems uniquely unappetizing. However, the slugs don't scream, for
the simple reason that they don't have any vocal apparatus. No
doubt what you hear is your own guilty conscience, which is
tormenting you for destroying God's creatures. Or maybe it's the
hiss of desiccating slug fluids. I don't know, and I don't want to
know.
A better method of dealing with the slug menace is to put
out a pie tin filled with a half inch of beer. The slugs drink the
beer, pass out, and drown. (Or so they tell me. I did not stick
around long enough to see this actually demonstrated.) You can also
use a miracle slug killer called metaldehyde, which was originally
developed as a solid fuel for camp cookstoves. One day in the 1930s
some campers in South Africa left a can of metaldehyde out all
night and awoke to discover it surrounded by recently deceased
slugs and snails. Aha, said the campers, slugicide!
On the other
hand ... well, maybe you can just learn to love 'em. I'm told
that the town of Montesano, Washington, has an annual slug
festival, in which the locals dress up the slugs in little costumes
and have slug races. Supposedly there are even slug cookbooks.
There are those who regard this as tragic evidence of the effect of
excessive rainfall on the human psyche, but who knows, maybe you
could get into it. I'll tell you one thing, though--next time
you're invited to a pot-luck in Montesano, think
twice.
IN DEFENSE OF SLUG CITY, U.S.A....
Dear Cecil:
As a former Seattleite, I feel
obligated to straighten you out in the slug department: (1) Elma,
not Montesano, is the home of the infamous slug races; (2) four to
five inches long is only average; (3) slugs aren't just brownish
white, but come in a rainbow of colors, including green with yellow
spots; (4) while some slugs will fall for the ol'
beer-in-the-pie-tin trick, salting is much more effective. I once
melted 178 in my front yard alone. (Remember that scene in The
Wizard of Oz, the one where the witch melts? Same idea.) (5)
Never heard of the slugicide you mentioned, but I still vote for
salt. No bodies. --Tamara K., Chicago
Dear Cecil:
While the lush and
glorious environment of western Washington State does indeed
produce many species of the wily slug, Puget Sound's greatest
natural wonder is the obscene geoduck (pronounced GOO-ee-duck). A
very large (four by seven inches) clam found in Puget Sound, the
geoduck has a crude phallus of a neck that is a source of endless
wonderment to visiting back-eastern swells such as yourself. One
find geoducks in Seattle markets--they are quite a delicacy--with
the massive neck, six to eight inches long and yellowish in color,
hanging out of the shell like a giant uncircumcised penis. Not a
sight one soon forgets.
As for slugs, squishing one between bare
toes while walking in the post-sunset cool of a Seattle evening is
unquestionably the grossest experience on earth. Believe me, I
know. --Paul O., Chicago
MAKE THAT SLUG AND GEODUCK CITY, U.S.A.
Dear Cecil:
My thanks to Tamara K. for
clearing up the matter of slugs. As a native Seattleite on a
two-year pitstop in D.C. I was appalled at your unsophisticated
ignorance of slugs.
But it was Paul O.'s comments about
geoducks--those phallic mollusks found only in Puget Sound--that
prompted me to write. My alma mater, Evergreen State College of
Olympia, Washington, claims the geoduck as its mascot. Our
teams--soccer, skiing, swimming--are called the Evergreen
Geoducks. Every graduation the 500-odd graduates solemnly sing the
geoduck fight song, written by ex-reference librarian
extraordinaire Malcolm Stilson:
Go geoducks go
Through the mud and slime let's go
Siphon high
Spit it out
Swivel all about
Let it all hang out. --Allison G., Arlington, Virginia
Dear Allison:
"Five hundred-odd graduates," eh? I'll say.
THE LAST THING YOU WILL EVER HAVE TO READ ABOUT THIS
DISGUSTING SUBJECT
Dear Cecil:
How could you think of addressing the
slug question without consulting your faithful Seattle
correspondent? Allow me these few comments:
First of all, I
concur: slugs are repellent beyond any other life form. Imagine, if
you will, hiking up the steep slop of Mt. Baker. The trail is at an
80 degree angle. Suddenly, in front of your nose, appears a huge
(we're talking nine inches) yellow-green phallic object, glistening
obscenely in the feeble light. Imagine, all the worse, stepping on
the aforementioned abomination! How many mysterious hiking deaths
could be explained by merely checking the spot on the trail from
which the deceased fell for the telltale silver splotch? And then
there are the ebony cannibal slugs of Mt. Rainier who devour one
another along trailside. I myself was once a patient at the
University of Oregon health center when I damaged my knee by
falling off my bike, having run over a slug--I was slimed right
off the path.
Now, how to kill the little buggers. The
beer-in-the-tuna-can method has never been at all effective for me.
The slugs hang over the edge and sip at the beer, but very few have
ever fallen in. (They do seem quite partial to beer, however.) As
for salt, some say it is extremely cruel, a feature that
undoubtedly makes it more attractive to many. But the main
disadvantage is this: if you salt or otherwise chemically attack
slugs, they dump all their slime in their death throes--years'
worth at once! The stuff is ineradicable and you are stuck with a
yard full of repulsive silvery slime globules.
I once entered the
yard of a neighbor and found eight or ten slugs, impaled on a shish
kebab skewer, writhing upright in her garden. "A deterrent," she
muttered darkly when I questioned her about this grisly
spectacle.
Geese and skunks alone among members of the animal
kingdom are said to eat slugs, and some keep them for this purpose.
To my thinking, the spectacle is too revolting to endure.
My
husband, to prove himself manly, has used the following method: he
picks them up with his bare hands (geeklike behavior, in my
opinion), and when they roll up in a ball (the burnt
sienna-and-orange variety that plague my yard change shape from
banana to papaya when attacked), he hurls them out into the street.
Then he runs back and forth over them with the car. Charming
behavior which I hope was not genetically transmitted to my
children. --Joyce K., Seattle
PS: Geoducks are too disgusting
even to comment on. If people get upset about porno in 7-Elevens,
why do they ignore the spectacle of geoducks at Safeway? Or even
worse, the live ones in Asian grocery stores that squirt at
innocent passersby?
--CECIL ADAMS
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