To be pissed off I am being outwitted by a slug/snail?

[GingerWrath]

We have lived in this house for three years. Most mornings I have come down to a lovely silvery trail in my kitchen that has sometimes ventured onto the hall carpet. This morning it was all over my oven mitt and up DD's brand new winter coat, hanging in the hallway!

I have searched high and low for this little blighter, pulled appliances out and I CAN'T BLOODY FIND IT. It's driving me doolally!

AIBU?

This book

I'm going to have nightmares for the rest of my life tonight

Ginger

Have you tried putting it in a saucer/shallow bowl, rather then a pint glass? Slugs are lazy bastards, and cannot be arsed to climb 6 inches for a drink. Bread crumbled into warm water and left to ferment overnight is another good slug lure. They go wild for melon rinds as well.

Or you could get some giant carnivorous slugs to patrol your skirting boards...

Carnivorous slugs?! I am going to go buy a can of John Smiths and try it in a dish tonight.

Do not pick them up. It takes ages to get the slime off your fingers and you will retch all the while.

No chance of me picking them up, unless I have rubber gloves on and a big wad of kitchen roll!

I worry slightly about the beer trap option. Is there not a risk of word getting out that you are offering free booze, and your house becoming party central for all the local teenage slug yobs?

Ginger - a sandwich bag is a cheaper option than rubber gloves - turn it inside out over your hand to pick up the slug (or other nasty thing that needs picking up), and then turn the bag right side out, trapping the slug inside for easy disposal.

On a related topic - I had to defend poor little ds2 (aged 16, several inches taller than me, muscular, sporty) from a spider last night. It wasn't in his room, or indeed upstairs at all - it was in the corner of the utility room Looking At him whilst he got his pe tracksuit out of the ironing basket. He made me go and inspect it because it was the size of his hand, and might be a poisonous foreign spider that had hitched a ride to scotland in some bananas (I am paraphrasing, but only slightly).

It was a fairly ordinary spider - not a little one, but not much bigger than a two pound coin (inc legs). But ds2 did not want it sneaking round the house whilst he was in bed, so I had to get the hoover out and hoover it up. And even then he was worried that it might not be in the dust collecting section , but might somehow have clung onto the inside of the hose (using its superstrength to defy the power of the dyson), so I had to check where it was and show him it was inamongst the dust and dog hair, and then I had to empty it into the outside bin whilst he squeaked at me about the spider escaping through the hole that all the muck goes through. I'm just surprised that he didn't insist I put a brick on top of the wheely bin in case the spider tried to open the lid from inside, climb back into the house through the cat flap and kill us all in our sleep!!

Right, have purchased a bottle of Hobgoblin to bait the trap!

I can see what'll happen tonight. DH will open the fridge for something and his eyes will light up, 'No dear that's for the slugs!'

The slugs will only need some of it - unless you have really greedy slugs - so your dh could have some - "but remember to save enough for the slugs, love!" Not a phrase you thought you'd ever need!

I'll pour some off and DH can have the slugs' leftovers

I don't normally like to compete but I'e got a huge fuck off rat stomping around in my basement conversion ceiling. We had to have environmental health in and they put down poison. The problem is the little bastard might die in the ceiling, which is inaccessible, leaving us wiht a stinky stink in the house for Gawd knows how long. They were attracted by our compost bin (that'll teach me to be blardy green) and our rabbits (someone told me they need to live indoors. Why oh why did I listen?? A broken brick near the drain at the back (thanks Mr Plumber for sorting out our pipe problem last year and not repairing the brick) and we've got Roland living (or more accurately, hopefully dying) downstairs.

I'd live with a herd of slugs in comparison....

I blame my own foolhardy bravery gingerwrath.

I pick up spiders, earwigs, caterpillars (not the hairy ones) and even maggots fearlessly.

So when I found a slug rasping away with its nasty little raspy tongue on one of my beautiful hostas I picked it off with the intention of stamping on it.

Urrggh! It was glued to my fingers. I wiped it off on the ground with difficulty and sent it to slug oblivion. I couldn't get the slime off my fingers. I had to use several squirts of neat washing up liquid in the end. It's like that stuff the Alien entombs its victims in.

I have grudging respect for the slimy little bastards now and approach fully gloved up.

They used to come under the kitchen door but they've stopped for no reason. So I can't help there.

We have the same problem and it is vile. Found at least 8 in the kitchen the other night when I went in to get a drink.

Is there any way to just keep them out? I can't bear the thought of killing them, only because then someone (me) will have to get rid of the bodies and the thought literally makes me heave!

huffy DH shot a rat in the head with his air rifle once. Moving small target from about 15 ft.

I was so impressed. It was like discovering that for years I'd been married to a member of the special forces masquerading as a mild mannered bloke whose wildest hobby is watching Top Gear.

He doesn't like me to talk about it in case I blow his cover someone reports him to the council.

Whack, just put em in a carrier bag with slug pellets and shake !

Btw, if you use pellets on double sided sticky tape it dries the bodies out so no real mess

I had the same problem as op until one night after watching a film I walked down the hallway (barefoot in the dark) and trod on it. Felt it pop and the guts went all inbetween my toes boak

The perils of old houses, slugs, spiders mice and slow worms!
I kid you not we get slow worms in the conservatory and I've even found one in the front room. They are actually rather cute and don't seem to mind being picked up passed and passed round curious DDs before eviction. Freaked out DD2 the first time though.

We had slugs in the kitchen. The bathroom was off it, DH trod on a big yellow fecker in the middle of the night. It squidged up between 4 of his toes and he screamed like a girl. I had to pick it out and then spent ages washing the slime off my hands. We moved.

There is a cloned skinny one and several huge fat Mamas taken up residance here. They trail all the way up the school uniforms and over anything important because they can. Yet I cant kill them I just would like humane way to get rid of them? Have heard if you kill them then more come back or is that wasps? They are persistant little beggers though clearly have a fine old time in this house.

Turn the lights off just before you go to bed. Get up an hour later and there it will be. They sneak out when the house is quiet.

Rock salt sprinkled all along the edge of my french windows did for the buggers in my house. They definitely come in at night as I found several of them half in and half out and 100% melting They have no bones so can slime through tiny spaces like ghosties. Since I did that I have never had them again, maybe there is residual salt there from the one time or maybe they all warn each other about the deadly house with the threshold of death. Either way - no more slime.

Ewww, fried slugs in the frying pan. Think you have just put me off mushrooms for life.

Oh yikes - I hate slugs and all these tales of slugs in the frying pan a plague of snails in my front garden (my actual front garden outside my house - snails on my fanjo would merit their very own thread). Not the same as in your living room, obviously. I have taken to leaving them half a cabbage near my front doorstep as I find this distracts them from eating my plants. I'm sure the postman thinks we are insane, but for the first time this year, I am able to grow things. (Other than strawberry plants, which they had only a passing interest in.) I must admit, I am surprised this worked as I did not think slugs and snails subscribed to a code of ethics, but they seem to be abiding by the trade-off.

Years ago, when caravanning with my parents, my dad made a pot of tea and we all said it tasted funny. On emptying it later, my dad found two lightly boiled snails. How we all laughed!

If you are removing slug snot from your skin, apparently cold water works better than hot. Unfortunately, slug snot on my hands makes me want to reach for bleach and scalding hot water, but I am told cold will actually shift it.

We have them too. They make me feel sick. I put salt near all the vents on the outside of the house, but they're still getting in. I may have to try the slug pellets.

I trod on one once and even though I was wearing shoes it still make me feel sick. They are absolutely vile.

This is supposed to help but I haven't tried it yet as it's not good in windy conditions...

They love oatmeal as well. They literally eat themselves to death on it [I think it absorbs all the liquid in their bodies].