Getting Slugs Drunk

One morning I found a pile of slugs having an orgy where my marigolds used to be. I considered humane ways to get rid of them. But then I read this:

“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“.

If they were willing to eat my flowers then do that in the remains they deserved to be tempted into drinking suicidal amounts of booze. If this pest control method resembles a scene from Hell’s Ironic Punishment Department, the invertebrates brought it on themselves! My last attempt at beer science had people unable to tell the difference between different beers made me wonder if slugs might do a better job? If they show a distinct preference for some beers over others can we say slugs are better at beer tasting than humans?

The contenders for top beer pest controller are pictured to the left (Bogmyrtle nixed the use of wine).

I booby trapped my garden with yoghurt pots filled with beer. I put two yoghurt pots with each of Beamish, Grafenwalder Pils and Homebrew IPA out into the garden. Each pot had the same mass of beer.

The pots were just placed on the ground not buried. I also added two pots of water as a control. If water can kill off slugs there is no point wasting beer doing it. I did not hide the names of the beers on the pots as I figure slugs cannot read.

I started a basic slug count of each pot. Bogmyrtle quickly barricaded herself in the house and started flipping towards the divorce section of the yellow pages.

I should have weighed the slugs to see what beer got the highest mass of slugs but requests to get a pot of slugs on the weighing scales were not greeted with approval. There was 22 slugs in each of three yoghurt pots. They were piled up like depressed kamikaze pilots after listening to Leonard Cohen during an episode of Eastenders. These pots had 60 grams of beer in them at the start. That is less than three grams of beer per dead slug. Which is worth considering next time someone calls you a lightweight.

Water caused zero dead molluscs so the control shows not just any liquid will kill slugs.
Grafenwalder Pils: 34 slugs lured siren-like to their doom.
Beamish: 35 stout-addled molluscs.
Homebrew IPA: 33 ex gastropods.

These results seem to indicate slugs have no statistically significant preference between beers. Any slops you have left over the night before should make an effective pest control mechanism.

If you have any coments on the amazing pest control abilities of beer please comment here.