Slugpocalypse Now!

Be afraid. Be really jolly afraid, actually. A rampaging army of zombie gastropods is eyeing up your garden. And they’re hungry as hell!

Shocking news surfaced last weekend. Whilst we are all basking in the delightfully chilly dampness of another Bank Holiday weekend, frightening reports came in, detailing the gruesome news that a generation of sleepless slugs now exists.

A wet summer, followed by a very mild winter, has failed to send the squishy blighters into hibernation, and they didn’t even drown in the flooding. According to conservation charity BugLife, we’re facing a population “explosion”, with potential for “devastation for our gardens”.

They’ve spent the winter on the sluggy equivalent of a massive 18-30 bender. Eating anything available and getting jiggy with it, they’ve raised an army of slimy soldiers, ready to do battle with your plants. Being hermaphrodites, they can even self-reproduce, which is great news for the really ugly ones who can’t get a date. For the lookers, there’s the added reproductive benefit that they both get pregnant.

Apparently, there were already as many as 20,000 slugs in the average British garden, and that figure could be set to rise by 10% this year. Wondering why you can’t see that many? It’s probably Invisibility! Or more likely, the fact that 95% of them are underground, dining on roots and those seeds you spent £4.99 at the Garden Centre. The swines.

It’s no good hiding your hostas, and there simply isn’t enough beer (or saucers) to protect everyone’s well-tended plants. And, whatever you do, do not go outside bare foot. Tread on one of advance party and the horror of feeling it squish between your toes will stay with you for days. For every one you strike down, more will rise. And they have 27,000 teeth each.

By my calculation, 20,000 slugs, increasing by 10%, means nearly 600 million slug gnashers are on standby, ready to wreak havoc in a Game Of Thrones-style massacre on your prize petunias.

There is one thing that could save us; A hot dry summer. We are, therefore, doomed. There’s even a variety called the Leopard Slug, and they can re-grow those weird eye-stalk things if they lose one. What chance have we got? Strike them down and they grow back. They’re deadly and invincible.

So remember – they’ll soon have finished with your garden. That was just a snack. Some of them are carnivorous. Soon they’ll be watching you, waiting. In fact, they’ll probably be watching two of us at the same time – they can do that as well.

When you least expect it (and as long as you stay in exactly the same place for at least an hour and they aren’t more than a couple of feet away) they will strike.

Before we know it, they’ll have taken control of our streets, overthrown the government, and left one hell of a slimy mess everywhere as they slowly, but surely, eat us alive.

Unless you’ve got some salt. Obviously.

This post first appeared as my "Thank grumpy it's Friday" column, in the North West Evening Mail, on the 6th of May 2016, where it was retitled as "Slimy invader is on our trail".

In a rather wonderful coincidence, the NWEM had an article on P16 titled "Prepare for the invasion of the supersized slug", featuring handy advice and an extreme close-up slug shot. Over the top of a second picture (of a chap from a garden centre who was dispensing the tips) was a trail for my column on P19. 

I have no idea what the paper are planning - in fact, it would be fair to say I have almost zero communication from them, so this really was luck.

As is often the way, I came up with the title shortly after the line about slugs being able to watch two people at the same time, and then embarked on writing. Due to other stuff happening, this one got written, edited, and submitted all in a couple of hours, including doing a spot of actual research.

Came out pretty well, I reckon.

(CD A-Z: Still on Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours", but the bonus disc of rough versions and outtakes from the 2004 edition.)