slugs: what is their deal?

they kill cats when nobody is looking.

wikipedia disagrees

future topics for deeznuts threads

immigrants, wtf?
there sure are a lot of starbucks going up lately!
now, i have nothing against gay people but...
it's hard to understand what they're saying at the drive-thru!
women are complicated and hard to understand!
have you seen that commercial with the guy who looks funny? he sure does look funny!

-- and what, Wednesday, August 20, 2008 4:20 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Link

interesting i never knew that about SLUGS jesus christ

I know a lot about slugs. They propel themselves on their own vomit. Slugs are constantly regurgitating so as to keep slinking around on their slimy path.
They like beer, and will drown themselves in a glass of beer given the chance.
Salt kills them really quickly.

I am feeling for you Deezie -stepping on a slug is horrible. Especially barefoot.

They propel themselves on their own vomit.

Uh, WOMIT.
We just moved to the Pacific NW and these fuckers are everywhere and they're big'uns. I always put shoes on before running outside cos I would spaz if I stepped on one.

I wish they'd kill the giant spiders we've been finding (and smucking).

My sibs and I had nothign – NOTHING – to do for fun at my grandma's house, because there was nothing to do for fun.

We'd go in her backyard and put snails and slugs in a pile and surround them w/a circle of salt that extended about 3" away, and wait and watch for them to slowly crawl over it.

I threw a snail at my uncle, and it exploded on him, causing him to vomit on the spot. Their shells are actually pretty delicate.

I am totally cool with slugs.

Hot sauce does not kill slugs, is another thing we discovered.

You and your hot sauce!

good thread greg

slugs - like life - can move pretty fucking fast

i never did anything nearly as sociopathic as what abbott just described, which btw makes me sick to my stomach

Because it's been such a wet summer here, there are millions of the little guys about. Big ones, too. Even my dog has lost interest in them, though he'll still occasionally touch them with his nose to make their tentacles withdraw. They have brought lots of fun life into the garden though - hedgehogs and toads, unusual birds etc. I think I prefer snails on the whole, though - less of the horror of the formless slimy thing.

Slugs cannot move very fast because they slide around on their own regurgitation.
Slugs are not like life.

^^^^^^^^^^^^ thank you aimurchie

You are welcome, Deezie.

get a room, you two

"Like other snails, a slug moves by rhythmic waves of muscular contraction on the underside of its foot. It simultaneously secretes a layer of mucus on which it travels, which helps prevent damage to the tissues of the foot."

I had to make sure my regurgitation story was correct. BUT - WTF with the foot?
Slugs have a foot.

ONE foot. A foot. I have not seen a foot on a slug.

I hope you guys will weigh in on this remarkable turn of events!

my family lived in germany for 3 years because my dad was in the army and stationed there. for some reason there were a lot of snails and slugs around.

This is also why people should be suspicious about the geoduck - it's basically a giant slug in a shell.

I'm not a fan of the escargot either. That would be a very small slug in a pretty shell.

Germany is not at fault, latebloomer. It was probably just damp.

Every morning I have to grab a piece of paper and pick up 4 or 5 slugs that are crawling around my living room. I figured out where they were coming into the house from and put salt around the hole (as well as something called "slug pellets"), but the fuckers just crawl STRAIGHT THROUGH IT.

At an angle, you can see their shiny foot trails all over the carpet before I clean it.

This is all a huge bummer.

The wikipedia article on slugs is great, and I'm now seeing them in a new light.

A commonly seen practice among many slugs is apophallation. The penis of these species is curled like a cork-screw and often becomes entangled in their mate's genitalia in the process of exchanging sperm. When all else fails, apophallation allows the slugs to separate themselves by one or both of the slugs chewing off the other's penis. Once its penis has been removed, a slug is still able to mate subsequently, but using only the female parts of its reproductive system.

GHOST SLUG!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Ghost_Slug_adult.jpg

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44822000/jpg/_44822720_3d8958d0-18af-4e39-a11a-5590010b90bf.jpg

BANANA SLUG!

http://www.naturallyconnected.com/my_weblog/images/2008/04/19/banana_slug_at_sanborn.jpg

ew wtf

my wife had pet slugs when she was a little kid, for a week or so. she eventually worried they were going to die and put them back outside.

it's one of those things about her i'll never understand.

The banana slug is both disgusting and awesome, though I'm not sure the measures are at all equal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtgPAQTJLQs

They do something really important for us, we just don't know what it is, yet.

besides inspiring great threads, that is.

When I attended college in Olympia, I told all the out-of-staters that the slug was the state bird of Washington. I was a cut-up.

Doesn't that college in Olympia have a Geoduck Fight Song?

Yeppers. We 'Greeners are the Fighting Geoducks!

can you sing us a verse?

Heavens! Not with my mouth full. It would ruin the bon homie.

I read an article in a science magazine which suggested slugs, if they had TWO feet, would mostly exhibit 'right-handedness.'

I love the mighty banana slug, especially when they've congregated on a rocky hillside to the point where you cannot see the ground beneath them.

I like all the living things!

Oh man, I thought geoducks were strictly an east coast thing! They are god's proof that phalluses can be really gross.

Those science know-it-alls! They have even mastered hypothetical reality!

aimurchie, maybe you could coax Lynda Barry to sing the Geoduck fight song instead of me. She would do a better job of it.

geoducks are strictly NOT an east coast thing.
over here we have quahogs and littlenecks.

famous graduates of that college in Olympia include Lynda Barry. The thing is, none of you will sing the geoduck fight song. Rumor has it that everclear don't have team sports or cheerleaders.

http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2008/06/geoducks-are-strange.html

I heard slugs may be part of the food chain!

well go ahead and eat them. I won't be joining you.

http://lh5.ggpht.com/abramsv/SEtR7Sc0NdI/AAAAAAAATyI/n532vZa-90k/s640/2072059921_3e6a3ad95d_o.jpg

I'M SO GLAD THE GEODUCK THING IS BEING AIRED OUT.

whenever i read this thread title, I imagine this

http://blogmunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/seinfeld.jpg

I know a lot about slugs.

Can you teach me to get'em out of my kitchen? Fucking bastards keep coming back. :-(

send me a plane ticket. I will totally do this for you.
"Secrets of the Slug Whisperer"

Drown them in beer! If that doesn't work get drunk.

I am a little bit confused about the slugs getting into peoples houses and stuff.
Savannah Smiles problem for instance. How does it get to that point? They are not moving very fast! I guess if it's a lot of them at once it would be scary.
I live on the third floor, so I guess they can't ever get here. But I'm not very fleet footed or quick witted and yet I STILL think I could stop a slug.

In the garden you just leave a bowl of beer and they regurgitate themselves into the bowl and drown. I like to think it's a happy death.

greg, are you ok? just waiting for my text

I'm still waiting for some pics.

http://www.evergreen.edu/athletics/geoduck.htm

it was just annoying me that some people would not sing this song.

The more I learn about geoducks the more I love them. They live to be 160! By burrowing in the sand.

It started in the "year that there was a huge slug fest". Apparently the climate (humid and hott) was perfect for them to breed like mad. I'm not sure how they have come into the house, probably from the garden, underneath the livingroom and into the kitchen? And once they are here they probably create a little love nest? Problem is that I can't find from where the lovenest is. But we haven't had any for a couple of weeks so maybe it's solved? Also, we had to repair some water receptor near the kitchen so maybe that was the cause? *shrugs* or should that be "slugs" haha Oh damn it I am so funny.

In the garden you just leave a bowl of beer and they regurgitate themselves into the bowl and drown. I like to think it's a happy death.

apparently according to a gardening colleague, Nematodes are the answer to slug problems.

Time to find out if a paste of Vaseline + cayenne pepper is an effective slug barrier.

Copper strips are meant to be an effective barrier but ugh these fucking guys can get in from anywhere

We adopted an outdoor cat during the winter when slugs weren't much of a problem, but now that it's warming up, they're getting into his food bowl, yeccchhh. So I've put the bowl on a wire plant-stand and coated its legs (not the cat's legs) with the Atomic Hotfoot.

Another option is to put the cat's bowl inside a bigger bowl full of water, so you've effectively got a moat around it. You might have to buy your cat some waders though.

Kosher salt is your friend! Pour a ring around whatever you're trying to protect and the slugs will not go there because salt kills them.

Salt will wash down into the groundwater near a bunch of hostas when it rains, though. This vaseline/cayenne mix should stick to whatever I apply it to. Just checked, and Bruce (the cat) likes having his bowl sitting up on a small platform. The slugs will come out at dusk...and THEY'LL BURN HAHAHAHAHA.

rip slugs

Hot sauce does not kill slugs, is another thing we discovered.

― Abbott, Saturday, August 30, 2008 10:47 PM (1 year ago)

It didn't even seem to *bother* them, fwiw. But I appreciate a good home science experiemnt. Let us know ihow it goes.

Cayenne vaseline did not work either!

You'd think capsaicin would drive them crazy as all they are is one big mucous membrane, but I guess that's not the case.

A pie tin full of beer is a good way to kill slugs.

Capsaisin isn't a general membrane irritant. It binds to vanilloid receptor subtype 1 on your sensory neurons, which in mammals normally responds to heat and friction. There's no physical damage, no matter how much hot sauce you consume.

Animals that lack VRS1, like slugs and birds, aren't effected at all. In fact, hot peppers ecological function is to prevent seeds from being consumed by mammals, so that they can instead be eaten by birds who will disperse the seeds further.

http://www.artbyteague.com/images/slugmaze/SaltMaze.jpg

Who, Sanpaku, thanks for dropping the pepper science! I am pretty sure my school's chile research joint is going to shame me at graduation for not knowing that, though.