One more: This is an old thread from Garden Web (I'm not sure which forum) that I saved years ago. The thread was pulled after the last post - probably by Spike who was trying around then to keep serious and conversational posts separate. I deleted the email addresses - this was before the GW Member Pages were established so real email addresses were shown. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Voracious banana slugs in the northeast! Posted by Ted - Maine - 4b on Sat, Apr 1, 00 at 18:59 I woke up this morning and went out to check on my primroses. To my horror, they were nearly all gone! After checking around the bed for a while, I discovered two *enormous* yellow slugs slinking away. At six inches long, they're about twice the size of any slug I've seen before! Could these be banana slugs? I've heard horror stories about the way they gobble up perennials. I thought they only bothered gardeners in the Pacific NW, but with global warming, we've been having some unusually mild winters lately in the Northeast. Maybe we're due for an invasion of banana slugs? Here is a link that might be useful: banana slug? Follow-Up Postings: RE: Voracious banana slugs in the northeast! Posted by: Kerry on Sat, Apr 1, 00 at 21:03 OH dear, they are spreading, these slugs are usually huge and are a puke green to very dirty yellow looking and have dark green to brown spots on them. There are many ways to get rid of them, on it to take you salt shaker out with you to the garden and sprinkle them liberally, when i say liberally i mean it! They have a tendancy to slough off a layer of slime that has been salted and get away, those little buggers, another way, a little more wierd is to put cheap beer in a wider saucer, they LOVE beer and will go into the saucer and drown, and the beer kills them anyway if the drowning doesn't. So keep up the fight, and I hope you win, by the way i heard sprinkling salt around the area keeps them annoyed also. good luck, Kerry RE: Delicious banana slugs in the northeast! Posted by: Karen in Toronto - 6a on Mon, Apr 3, 00 at 12:07 Ted and Kerry, since you know that beer attracts slugs, you might be interested in learning that salt, while killing the banana slugs, also makes a very good seasoning for them. While visiting a friend down south (Leamington, Ontario), we had a very tasty meal of banana slugs, dredged in coarse sea salt, dipped in beer batter, and deep-fried. They taste kinda like zucchini. PS - the above story is not true. I don't eat deep-fried food. PPS - Good one, Ted!! RE: Delicious banana slugs in the northeast! Posted by: Ted - Maine - 4b on Mon, Apr 3, 00 at 16:36 I like the "coarse sea salt" touch. Also, it stands to reason they *would* taste like zucchini . . . RE: Voracious banana slugs in the northeast! Posted by: chris on Tue, Apr 4, 00 at 18:52 Hi, just a brief note, don't go haywire with that salt! I did last year. It killed the slugs. it also killed my lettuce, all of it. I have heard vinegar is another way to get rid of them, however don't know the results on lettuce! ick. Slugs are my most favorite enemy now. Who'd ever think I'd hate a bug? mollusk, whatever, that much! RE: Voracious banana slugs in the northeast! Posted by: Nancy - PNW on Wed, Apr 5, 00 at 0:24 If you have kids they can be a great help in slug correction. I invented the "Slug-a-pult" for their removal. It consists of a slender bamboo rod, as long as the person is tall. Secure the slug onto the pointed end, then carefully lift it up and back, so that by whipping the bamboo forward, the slug is flung 100 yards or so. Kids enjoy the competition of seeing who can fling their slug the farthest. There may be a problem if you have neighbors. RE: Voracious banana slugs in the northeast! Posted by: Nadine NY5 on Wed, Apr 5, 00 at 7:42 Vinegar with lettuce sounds like instant salad. Add some olive oil, and you're all set! RE: Voracious banana slugs in the northeast! Posted by: Jan - 7 on Wed, Apr 5, 00 at 21:14 LOL!!!! But seriously, there's a product called Snarol, a powder, I used it last year on the strawberries because the slugs were eating them.. It had to be re-applied after rain. Also, I was told (but never tried) that slugs hate pain, and you can create a "barrier" by spreading that gravel sold for fish-tanks around your plants. RE: Voracious banana slugs in the northeast! Posted by: The Slug - 6a on Thu, Apr 6, 00 at 12:09 You people kill me. Signed, The Slug RE: Voracious banana slugs in the northeast! Posted by: Beverly VA N 5a6b - Shenandoah Valley on Fri, Apr 7, 00 at 0:32 Just stumbled on this web page that you all may find interesting. It recommends killing slugs with vinegar. Here is a link that might be useful: Slugs and Vinegar RE: Voracious banana slugs in the northeast! Posted by: Rhonda - 7 on Fri, Apr 7, 00 at 22:04 I had to smile when I read this, the only memory I have of San Francisco I have is one of the huge banana slugs in a Japanese botanical gardens there. Luckally we didn't have them in Atascadero, where I grew up. Thanks for the memory. Rhonda RE: Voracious banana slugs in the northeast! Posted by: Claire - MA 6b on Fri, Apr 7, 00 at 22:13 Banana slugs can also be dried for future culinary use. I find the easiest way to dry them is to hang them from the branches of any smallish tree. If you choose the brightest yellow slugs, you get a good facsimile of a golden chain tree with the slugs dangling down. When they're fully dried, you can harvest them whenever you need a quick, nutritious meal. Claire -----------------------------------------------------------

Oh, I'm sorry about your pendant--what a shame! I hope that the cleaning company will pay up! I've had the same cleaning woman for almost 20 years now. But we've had our share of mini-disasters! The biggest disaster was that her assistant knocked a painting off a shelf. It tumbled down the stairs, shattered the glass, destroyed the frame, and punched a big hole in the drywall at the bottom of the stairs! The painting (an original) was thankfully not damaged, but I had to get a new frame and glass. I was miffed--that painting had rested there for years and years, through troops of children, house guests, and dusting with nary a nick. I feel as if I have been pretty lucky. But I think I will go dust my Murano glass pendants right now, just to set my mind at ease...

OMG, those are really sad stories! RIP, as awful as yours was, it honestly is pretty darn funny now (LOL!). Mine deals with my pregnancy, as well. We had our "dream " home here in the mountains built the year of 1992-3. It was a long process and DH's staff at his clinic was there cheering us on throughout it all. We promised them we'd have a big Christmas party here once we moved in to celebrate and for them to see it in person at last. Well, I got pregnant that August right after we moved in and was still having 24/7 morning sickness in December. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was think about food, let alone cook any! But, I love Christmas and was so excited about the new house (and anxious to show everyone our baby's nursery) that I decided to go through with the party anyway. We hired our favorite restaurant to cater the sit down dinner for everyone and their spouse or S/O. I hired my neighbor's housekeeper to clean for me and figured all was good. Wrong! The housekeeper couldn't come until the day of the party. She brought her adult daughter to help her. The daughter tripped over our vacuum, breaking it, a 3-ft tall vase and put a 14" round, deep, brown dirt hole in our foyer's cream colored adobe wall. That really started my pregnancy hormones raging ;^D. Thankfully the daughter wasn't injured. It took them until just before the guests were to arrive to finish cleaning, as they were sweeping instead of vacuuming by then. More hormones going nuts! DH arrived home and started patching the hole in the wall just as the caters arrived. I was under the impression they were bringing all the food already done, but instead, they needed to cook and finish much of it here . . . with the housekeepers still cleaning around them! I was running around trying to show the caters where everything was, while hurrying DH along. 20 minutes before all the guests were due to arrive, I was still in my sweats and feeling like you-know-what . . . and then I realized that with all the chaos, I'd forgotten to set the table!!! Our 9 y/o son volunteered to set it for me while I changed for the party. Thankfully, the guests were a good 15 minutes late, giving me time to rescue the table from my 9 y/o's vision of a great dinner party table (LOL!). Our first dinner party here was a hit that evening despite all the disasters, my all-day morning sickness . . . and the fact that, although my dress was a maternity one, I'd never considered the need for pregnancy nylons. They kept slipping down over my stomach and threatening to shoot to the floor like an over-stretched rubber band throughout the evening! I think I spent the majority of the evening with one fist desperately clutching them to my belly! Lynn

Oh, dang! I photocopied the pic the other day ... took it to a dinner the other night ... shared it ... and it disappeared! And before son had seen it, too. Sometimes sharing has some drawbacks! And after I'd sprung for the 15 cents to get it in colour, too! When I came on Mon. to photocopy it again - disappeared into (Photobucket's) thin air! Oh, unjoy! ole joyfuelled (most of the time)