In article , Louis Ohland
wrote:
A low tech method - fill a saucer or pie tin with cheap beer. The
cheaper, the better. Good way to use PBR. Slugs love malt. They crawl in
and expire.
Field studies show the majority of slugs crawl into it, then right out,
unharmed -- if it's shallow like in a pie tin. A few will be killed by the
alcohol content but that evaporates off in about an hour, & the only
reason they would die thereafter would be to drown. Slugs can only drown
in water that is deeper than their "foot" can reach them back out of. If a
Yoplay yogurt cup (with inward-reaching walls) is sunk partly in the
ground (not all the way or beneficial insects will fall in) slugs will
crawl into it after the scent of the beer malt, & can't crawl back out.
The beer has to be changed DAILY; slugs can't smell old stale beer & won't
find it. Slugs have favorites, too. A study at the University of Colorado
discovered slugs dislike some beers & just won't pay attention to them.
They did rather like Michelob & Budweiser. They were MOST enamored of
Kingsbury Malt, which is not alcoholic & never kills slugs toxically, but
the Corado study used DEEP "professional" slug traps that drowned them. A
University of Ohio study used shall beer traps with "lids" for the sake of
population & species studies. These were not supposed to kill the slugs, &
didn't kill them. The "hide box" beer traps attracted a lot of slugs,
which liked the beer enough to hang out in the trap (clinging to the roof)
for easy count & species assessment. Essentially beer in a hide-habitat
made them happy rather than dead.
The Entymology Society of America did a study to see how metaldehyde snail
bait worked compared to beer. In greenhouses, with beer traps, they caught
about 300 snails, to every 28 snails caught by metaldehyde bait. This
study was a while back & they didn't compare Sluggo & EscarGo, made from
the first muluscide that honestly WORKS, even when wet, & which is totally
non-toxic to anything but muluscs. It is pure iron phosphate, which snails
like the taste of, but which causes them to slime themselves to death,
unable to eat a thing more in the meantime. Imagine having your mouth full
of jello which you can neither swallow nor spit out, & you slowly starve
to death. How sad for the slugs! The little *******s. By comparison
metaldehyde baits first of all don't attract many slugs, and attract ZERO
slugs when it is matted down with rainfall or waterings. So that stuff has
to be DRY for snails to eat it, but snails aren't so active when days are
dry. If they do eat any of it in the rain, because the toxins cause the
slug to dehydrate to death, this often doesn't happen if it is raining. It
works a bit better inside a box where slugs can find it dry on a wet day,
but essentially metaldehyde bait isn't very appealing to slugs either way,
as the Entymology Society comparisons proved.
But back to the fun Colorado study. Slugs don't like Rainier Beer, Strohs,
Pabst Blue Ribbon, Coors, or Millers. Anyone who likes these beers lacks
even the good sense of a slug. Anheiser-Busch beers were across the board
better liked, inducing one soul to suggest a new brand, Slugweiser; but
nothing equalled non-alcoholic Kingsbury Malt in slug appeal, so alchies
who don't dare have anything around the house but near-beer are in like
flint. Slugs didn't like flat beer at all, they wanted it fresh or none of
it. Slugs also don't like wine. Gallo Wine was slightly more appealing
than plain water, but not by much.
Here's a more complete slugpost:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm...utput=gpla in
-paghat the ratgirl
--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl:
http://www.paghat.com/