I don't understand slug trails

[Octagonchecker]

Where did they come from where did they go? Why do slug trails start in the middle of a room and end in the middle of a room? Is there a slug living under the furniture? Or a family of them? Do they live in the walls? Do they come through a crack somewhere? How do I find and/or stop the slugs??

Thanks for the earworm, Cotton Eyed Joe!

Yarp 🤣🤣🤣

They come from somewhere dark and damp. Under your kitchen cabinets?

Me too! I wanted a nice quiet evening and now my brains rollicking around…

Mine were coming up the kitchen sink. Filling and repointing the gaps between the paving slabs in my garden (after throwing loads of slug pellets down there) has got rid of them.

Mine were creeping through a rotten bit of timber by the front door. But like yours stopped in the middle of the room. I even upturned the sofa to find them, but never did. New door, new architrave, no more trails.

Think mine come through the seal on the front door. Its a bit dodgy.

I think they must sometimes return along the same trail (maybe it saves slime?). Unless someone has one that both starts and ends in the middle of a room, then I’m stumped.

Ours get in through the gaps around pipes I think, or up through the floorboards.

I think once they’re in, they bring their babies/have babies in your house, it’s so grim. Our house is old, and they got in through little cracks in the front and back door frame, up through the sink like a PP said. Once I found a slug in a frying pan on the hob which died in bacon fat (what a way to go!). Plugging up holes and using spray/pellets will help, it takes a while though, keep doing it every night before bed.

My elderly mum had a trail on her handbag. Why did they come in her flat?! There’s nothing but carpet and old Good Housekeepings

I find them quite funny
There was one in mum's house
Well, we didn't actually get to meet the critter but we saw the evidence on the kitchen carpet

I cleaned it up, but I thought it was pretty funny

I find slugs cute - they dont come to my flat but I would probably be amused as long as they weren't too many

Mum just thinks of them as hiding at night until they can come out and eat her plants

One of the neighbours insists that she was going out for her early shift about 5 am and they were shagging in the garden 😂

They are cellar slugs and must exist on dust and crumbs - not all slugs eat plant leaves. We get them in the kitchen (one fried itself on the dishwasher's circuit board, shorting the electrics and requiring DH to make a new PCB for the dishwasher) and in the living room, where they come out and do dances around the floor - the only explanation for the spaghetti-like trails.

I no longer have an explanation for the WHY. It is beyond me. Apparently cellar slugs are a vulnerable species but I still don't cherish them.

Now I have earworm too. It also brought back a memory of a girl in the communal toilets in uni halls in the middle of the night apologising for the slug trails around her mouth.

Ours wiggle in under the gap at the bottom of the back door. Then climb up the utility room walls and across the ceiling - where the trial stops! I imagined one ran out slime and just plopped to the floor where he slimed his way back out. I left our bathroom window open the other night and when I was in the shower the next morning saw a blob in the corner and lo and behold it was a slug having a steam bath.

I'm having this exact problem at the moment, found one at 4am just hanging in my kitchen. Have put wire wool in every crack I can find but I reckon they will still get in. They give me the heeby jeebies, and I have trod on one barefoot before which is something that haunts me to this day. Oh god now I'm going to have sluggy nightmares now.

This has reminded me of getting up from the sofa at a relative’s house and standing on one - it squashed 🤢 and I feel sick at the memory

Apart from that I didn’t actually see any over the few nights, but it looked like they came in every one and had a party in the living room every night - zig zags/circles - just guess they went out the same trail they came in - I obviously never again just got up without checking carefully

Ih - this song will now forever be linked to slug squash - I hope I don’t hear it much again 🙈

Ours used to come up through little holes in the floorboards from the cellar below. Sometimes if I went into the sitting room late at night and put the light on I’d find a couple on the rug and think it all looked such hard work, what are they up to?!

Slugs give me the horrors. I think I’d have a heart-attack if I stood on one. 😱

One of my friends volunteered in a university slug survey - she collected them in the garden after dark, popped them in tubs and posted them off to the team.
... I must remember to ask her what, if anything, was discovered 🤔
Nb. If you don't want slugs, don't have decking.

Two springs ago they were appalling. So many outside. The plastic back door frame has deliberate holes to let out water and so I plugged them with blu-tack. It seemed to help but I musn't assume anything. Don't like them. Snails - ok- dry shells, but slugs - eugh.

i forgot to confirm it was with my bare foot 🤢

It disturbed me a good while - I’m now reminded and a song to match lol

I’m no fan but one up from a spider - I’d still be having therapy

Haha, I used to wake up to loads of trails in my old flat. Some started in the middle of the room, like the slug parachuted in.

Like a PP, I have also suffered the horror of stepping on a slug barefoot in the middle of the night. But it will never match stepping barefoot in cat diarrhoea. Nothing can top that.

The great slug mystery. We went through a spell of having them in our utility room, but after catching them creeping out late at night, evicted them and haven’t had them for a couple of yrs. I think ours lived under the washing machine!

Some of ours come in on the cat. Lovely. Then there’s others about a foot up on the curtains. I’m sure those fling themselves in the middle of the room, do some zoomies and wait for the 3:45 cat express back to the curtains or outside.

That’s me - I have to say I felt bad I’d killed it too - with my bare foot 🙈

Cat diarrhoea would be rank and disturbing too though - I am currently catless, which is sad, and in a 3rd floor flat, which I like - so I have no chance of a comparator at all for a while at least lol