Considering it is a slug, the slide part ought to be pretty easy.

Slugs are animals. They belong to the Mollusk group.

porkpal said:Considering it is a slug, the slide part ought to be pretty easy.

Not sure if it would be that easy on grass though, especially when it's wet. Has anyone made experience with this?

Oh, now we have a slip and slide???
Actually, nobody has mentioned Opossums yet, they are supposed to consider slugs a delicacy.

As does the box turtle.

But would the turtle also like the plants?

They eat low growing vegetative buds of herbaceous plants, tender shoots but they also eat berries, fruits, insects, worms, slugs, and I imagine anything tasty that they can reach. They are true omnivores.
They probably eat the flowers of low growing flowering plants.

Half the answers seem serious and half seem like a joke. I'm sure there are scientific studies to explain whether or not slugs have feelings, but...

In my yard, the resident turtles eat the usual assortment of earthworms, grubs, some slugs (but there are not many in that area of the yard), and they seem especially fond of some types of fungi that pop up from time to time. The turtles tend to stay in the more 'wooded' area of the yard where there is lots of oak leaf litter to harbor their main protein sources. Here is a photo of one of the turtles...yes, I know it's mostly of a dog, but it's the only photo I have of the turtle. They tend to be a bit camera shy.


The slugs are mainly in the front yard. Nothing seems to eat them. I learned the hard way many years ago to not pick them up with bare hands so now I use small twigs in the manner of chopsticks to transfer them into whatever disposable container is at hand and chuck them into the trash.

I only ever see the black slugs as in this photo; they often climb up my front steps hoping I will slip, fall and break a hip.


The slugs in my yard are not as huge as in the northwestern part of the US but they are big enough for me to slip and fall should my Crock shoes encounter on on the damp grass. For me, it's either my life and health or the slugs. They contribute nothing to my garden so I don't mind eliminating them.

In my yard, there are also Rosy Wolfsnails but I cannot count on them to be plentiful enough to control the slug population so I lend a hand...or rather, a twig to eliminate the slugs.

I don't use poison or commercial bait for slugs. One method I would consider would be the half grapefruit up-side-down overnight and dispose of it in the morning. Apparently, if one were to place a grapefruit (after consuming the fruit) upsidedown where slugs are known to congregate, the slugs will hang out in that comfy place and in the early morning, the gardener can just lift the grapefruit, keeping hands clean, and drop it in the trash bag.

There is also the board method. Similar to grapefruit, but place a wide board on the ground and check in the morning. This method requires the gardener to scrape the slugs off the board into...something. Either method is cheap and easy and chemical free.

But wearing wellies and doing the squash/slip and slide works too. I say, "Every gardener for himself! or herself! as the case may be.

Greene, you are right, the board method works! PS. I also have duck eggs throughout the week, but they come from 100 miles away. Love them! Love to have two or three of those turtles. Real turtle nut!! In fact, everything considered, I think I am a nut! LOL.

Yes, I already know you are a nut.

I must be a nut too because I rescue plants, trash, turtles, lizards, birds, dogs and anything else that happens along...except for slugs. Those I dispatch as quickly as possible.
This is an Eastern Glass Lizard I rescued in September and brought to live in the back part of the yard. Maybe that's one of the reasons there are fewer slugs in back.

Sorry about a hand in the photo but if I put the lizard down the dogs would have played with it.

Is he/she truly legless? - externally, anyway.

I have piles of brush that harbor snakes, and they look well-fed.

Some slugs I flick out of the garden; some I crunch with a broomstick in the evening; some I squish underfoot; some I trap in beer traps; some I sprinkle salt on. Mostly I just put up with them if they're not eating my vegetables, because somebody has to eat all that dead stuff and turn it to soil.

lelimlelly said:Hello everyone,
like many others, i too have a big problem with slugs in my garden.
Of course i want to get rid of them, but i did not want to use any chemical solutions or beer traps, so i wanted to kill them by myself, and i thought that probably the easiest way to do that would be to just crush them underfoot, and that is what i did practically the whole last year. I even bought a pair of wellies just for that purpose.

Now my question; I have heard that stepping on them can be cruel and that it takes some time for them to die, especially when the boots have a rough profile (which mine have), but i thought that a rough profile would just kill them faster?

Now i don't know if i should keep killing them this way because i don't want to hurt them too much for too long.

Thanks in advance :)

Google states: "Remember; slug brains are nothing more than a collection of nerve cell bodies – they're certainly not developed enough to resemble anything like the periaqueductal grey matter or nucleus raphe magnus. This is one reason why I don't believe that slugs feel pain." So as lot of us see it, they are kind of like Trump…but they can't tweet!

This thread is marked as 'Closed' but it seems to be opened; how is that possible?

Edited to add:
Maybe it was a glitch. The thread is no longer marked as 'Closed'.

Closed is not the same as locked.

What does closed mean?

I had a slug problem a while back. I put a saucer of beer out on a damp day and soon realized it wouldn't be enough because the slugs were hanging from my plants everywhere by the thousands like holiday ornaments. So I put rubber surgeon gloves on and collected a quart of the little buggers. I threw them in a pond hoping the fish would eat them. They crawled out. I even saw a few panting on a rock a few feet out. Plan B was to don a headlamp at night and drop them in a container partly filled with water and a splash of alcohol. It worked. I collected two large yogurt containers full several times a week. My family said I was hunting "orcs". At the end of the second year there were almost none to collect.

I'm glad they are gone but killing them didn't make me smile. Life is just hard. I teach school and sometimes I ask my students why they would willingly step on a spider but think twice before crushing a butterfly. I guess we all do what we can live with

In the pacific northwest I have to be alert and on slug patrol much of the year. I have collected them with tongs and a bucket of soapy water and dumped em over in the field. I have beer trapped, copper taped large areas, and on and on. Now, I have settled into a routine that works out best for me. Early in the spring, I wander the beds they like at dusk or later with a long pair of scissors, and chop em right in half. I leave them. I read in a garden book that other slugs are loose their appetite when they have to eat where their little brother or sister is an oozing mess, I never could decide if the author was joking or if there was some truth in it, so I leave them. My nephews love slug patrol, and it's become a celebratory tradition here. One night we got over 100. I am not using baits yet, so the escargo are good food for the birds. Sluggo is said to be safe, but who knows. I don't chop slugs and use bait at the same time. I use it thru summer, It always seems my patrolling really cuts down on the population, and my slug bait goes a lot further.

Philipwonel said:Snail and slug pellets, makes them so high, that they don't get out of sun, so they don't even know there getting fried to death.

Hi! I read that people use too high doses of this, and it poisons other animals (mammals), among them pets, and also children. I would say DON'T use high amounts of slug pellets please, but the minimum if you must.

For the fastets least painful kill I would say stomp with your foot, hard, and also drag it a bit from side to side to make sure they are dead fast.

Oh, I could never decide to stomp them. I have no desire to ruin a pair of shoes.

I have always used pellets. Again, I could use beer, but that is best taken internally! And I can't drink it once the slugs have been swimming in it.
I could try human hair which they won't crawl through but I love the pellets.
I have always had cats and they have never come in contact with the pellets. I take great care in dispersing them. Once in place I spritz them with water to make them really appealing to the snails! The carnage I find come morning always amazes me. Dozens and dozens are dead. If I have done it right, never using too much, there is very little left lying around! And my cats want no part of the bodies!!

So in summary, in over 35 years of pellets there has not been a single casualty except "The Slimers" that I wanted to kill AND I still have my hair and I can enjoy a nice cold beer!!