Mom: Slug Exterminator

My mom abhors slugs (“namekuji” in Japanese). I actually think she may have a real clinical phobia toward them. Moving to the pacific northwest only exacerbated her fear, as they thrive in this climate. Some of them get quite large as well — my mom refers to these as “submarines”.

Well, earlier this year, she decided to fight back. She started spending her mornings in the back yard and garden, obsessively using chopsticks to pluck the slugs from the ground and toss them into the waste bin. My sister convinced her that she should keep careful tallies of the slugs she’s captured, knowing I’d be willing to graph the results. Here they are, for your viewing pleasure:

As you can see, she was on a tear during the late spring / early summer. They appeared all but gone in the late summer (such that she couldn’t really find any to capture), though they popped back up to a low level during the fall. It’s hard to tell how much of the decrease was seasonal, and how much was from her making a sizable dent to the overall slug population. I’m quite curious to see how this trend further develops into next year, and whether her vigilance could prevent them from accumulating to the levels they got to in 2015.