We're at war.

Did you know? Of course you didn’t, because I’ve been too embarrassed to share it with you. Then I did a little research and realized we found just one more reason to add to our ever growing list of reasons why those first dudes ran screaming from this dark, dank floating hunk of over-used land. Becasue much of water logged Britain has this problem.



In a word, slugs. We have slugs. It’s interesting, when we first started this blog, a little over a year ago, we imagined lots of posts about all the exciting travelling we would be doing. We’d post as we sung from the Austrian hills, with our skirts twirling round and round. (This was more Pete’s fantasy than mine.) We’d post from the dig in Tuscany we were helping out with. Because all first year Oxford students get to go on a dig in Italy……and their wives get to tag along too. We might have even posted from a sail boat as we cruised through the Greek islands, balancing historical sight seeing with perfecting our incredibly even, mocha brown tans.

Then we moved here and realized that all of those posts require mullah……….now imagine those 3 little fantasy bubbles instantaneously popping over our heads. Pete’s twirly skirts, POP! Our dusty Tuscan dig, POP! Oh no, not our Grecian cruise……..POP! Ouch, that one hurt. So, here we are posting about slugs.

When I say we have slugs, I feel the need to clarify. In the thick of it, about mid-summer, we would come downstairs, walk into our little kitchen, and see 6-7 shiny slug trails running across our rug. Then we’d walk into the living room and there were about 3 or 4 more. This was on a good day. I still can’t bring myself to describe our kitchen rug after we came home from visiting you all this summer. Let’s just say, the slugs knew we were gone, and they threw a party. From the looks of it, it was probably a raging kegger.

We’ve tried several methods. Our first attempt was the tried and true bowl o’ beer. But these are no ordinary punch happy Yankee slugs. These suckers have roots in this land, they scoff at beer. In fact, they circle around the bowl, laugh at our attempt, and slug on by. Jerks.
Next was the ol’ “salt the holes” method. Problem was, we live in a crazy old house. It’s rather drafty, and now we know why. There isn’t actually any sort of divider between under our house, and our floors…..besides our floors of course. But this means, that anywhere floor meets wall, or even worse, floor meets pipe, large holes surround these areas. The slugs are pouring in, and we don’t have enough salt to stop them. Finally we attempted the rarely used “Line of salt” attack. We surrounded our entire kitchen, and living area with a line of salt. Yes, on the carpet. Don’t judge me. You weren’t here, you don’t know!

Unfortunately, this epic battle story has no end. We still have slugs, we continue to fight on. The winter has killed most of them off, but we know they’ll be back. Stronger, faster, and probably with fangs. But we’ll be here, and we’ll fight to the death. Because damnit, we have brains! They don’t even have spines. So we say…………..bring it sluggo. You’d better frickin' bring it.


Happy Twirling everyone!