While on a video call with our resident Nature-led Poetress Patricia Lezama she asked me what to do about slugs eating her plants. Not thinking anything of it I started to describe getting a shallow bowl, setting it flush with the ground, and pouring cheap beer in it. Wait for nightfall and by the next morning you’ll have a bowl full of dead drunk slugs. The look on her face was priceless! Her eyes got big and her mouth fell open in a mix of both horror and bemused interest, “Whaaaat?!?!“

It was at that precise moment that I realized, “Yeah, helping slugs drink themselves to death is a bit odd.” I can’t even tell you when I first learned of it. Someone in my family or a family friend must have shown me this trick when I was a kid. I only do it once or twice in the spring when the slugs are at their worst.

We rarely buy beer in this house so imagine my surprise when I come around the corner and find my spouse drinking one only to ask, “Why’d you buy such cheap beer?”

“Because it’s for the slugs!” I said. “If you want beer, put it on the grocery list.” This precise exchange has happened at least five times almost every spring. Last year was the first year I think I finally remembered to put a sticky note on the beers. It read: Slug Beer!

As I told Patricia, I like to think of the slugs having discovered a wonderful beer party where they all drink themselves into a wet coma and die. Happy and none the wiser to their demise.

I don’t like killing things. (I’m a vegetarian for crying out loud!) Sometimes though population need to be crashed to maintain a balanced ecosystem. The slugs are attracted to the sweet smell of the yeast in the beer and I only do it when I can visibly see I’ve got a massive slug year on my hands This year there weren’t enough slugs to bother with a beer trap. I’m not a robot AI bent on the complete annihilation of a species!

I’ve never had an issue with unintentional victims, not so much as a drunken squirrel! According to multiple online sources there are natural predators to slugs including ground beetles, some birds, frogs, toads, snakes and apparently hedgehogs!?!? Well, now I’ve learned something new!

I probably don’t want to know about the first time someone figured out that leaving beer unattended overnight attracted slugs. The novelty of it though makes me think of carnivorous plants, specifically Pitcher Plants, using the sweet smell of nectar to lure unsuspecting insects down their throats where escape in unlikely.

So now I’m curious, do you have any gardening tricks that might seem weird to others?