My grandmother and great aunt started it all. I can remember visiting them on Whidby Island in the warm summers. They lived in a lovely area with lots of trees and wildlife. The evening light lasted longer up there too and it was beautiful. My gran and aunt were maybe a little eccentric though and at night just after dark, they would each head outside into their gardens with a ziplock baggie, tongs and a flashlight, armed for hunting slugs and snails. You could see their lights🔦 bobbing around the garden stopping here and there, and after about 20 minutes they would come back inside flushed with victory over their catch! Their baggies full of slimy critters🐌 and their lovely little plant babies safe from hungry molluscs!
Both of these ladies loved animals, nature and gardening, and when it came to a solution for getting rid of the slimy pests that were eating their tender plants, they wanted as toxin free a solution as possible. The other thing that they discovered about snails was that if you just squish them, they were still capable of procreating and making more slimy garden eating pests! So the snails would have to be removed and no parts left behind. They devised the Snail Hunt: 1. bag, 2. zip and 3. toss, and you know what, it works! And way better then anything toxic out there. Its no or very low cost, pet and child safe and nontoxic to humans, wildlife and the environment too. Although unconventional, I think they were also pretty smart little old ladies too!
This year mums been working hard on her garden. Planting lots of vegetable and flower seeds. Transplanting and rooting cuttings and her garden is just beautiful! A few weeks ago, she did notice that the slimy ones were munching her baby seedlings and rootings, so she armed herself with some baggies and went hunting! She’s been gathering up baggie after baggie full for weeks and there was a little slowing in the hunt due to her brave baggie victories, until last weeks rains came.
For some reason the damp weather brought the snails out from under their hiding places and these guys were bigguns!! She spent a whole morning going out and coming back in for coffee and warm ups and by the time she was done her baggies were stuffed full! She even had to get a bigger one to handle the overflow!
She told me about her mornings quest, and about her two stuffed full baggies, and I just knew we needed a picture! She had already tossed them into the big trash can, and even though mums kind of short, she went out and got out the one baggie she could still reach, and we took pictures and documented the great snail hunt of 2016!
Seriously though, if you’re looking for a non toxic, pet and family friendly way of eradicating those pesky molluscs, feel free to use our old family remedy of hunting and bagging snails🐌 and if you need to use tongs, there’s no shame in that, although mum usually just catches them with her bare hands!
Happy hunting friends!🐌
NEW PAIR OF WINGS 