Ok thank you Gail. They don't seem to like to munch on my older Clivia. But I had one of the younger ones have one leaf demolished! :(. They must enjoy the young tender leaves! I had read about the ammonia in a squirt bottle and beer as bait! Mine were sitting on a back porch! I've just got a new table (yay) for Dad. But I've got to get stain on it this weekend! This will too surely help. Thanks for your help. Hope all is well in Michigan! -Teisa

lady bugs would be killed by insecticides ... snail will be killed by mollusk-cides .... so to begin with ... you have to insure.. you use the right cure .. for the right problem ... using the GW search engine, up near the top of the page ..... i came up with 130 pages of posts about snails/slug [and as far as i am concerned.. a slug is a snail without a shell...lol] ... i choose one below for a link... to get you started ... and i will tell you one magic suggestion.. persistence ... they replicate faster than rabbits ... and its a year long battle... from egg stage .. to the butter and garlic stage ... lol ... there will be no mystery cure .. that will get rid of them .... except you never giving up .... good luck ken Here is a link that might be useful: link

ducks or geese or chooks? or one of the livelier meat eating fowls? do pheasants eat snails? or guinea fowls or peacocks

I too have lots of slugs and snails, but I would never kill them. I feel they have a purpose in this world the same as every helpful creature we know of, in fact there is one plant that is only 'pollonized' by a slug. I have a pond and so I am sure that the frogs have lovely suppers.(In fact the slugs and snails are now only found in my front garden and not in the back where the pond is) I don't put pellets down as I want my birds to be safe. Something I have found out is that they love apples. I had noticed that my apples I had put out for the blackbirds had been eaten in a wonderful round hole very neat and tidy which I hadn't expected knowing how they just peck at them. Then one night I went down the garden and came across two snails inside an apple eating it into the neat circular shape I had seen previously. My idea to keep your plants safe would be to put out a few pieces of apple round the base of the plants and see if they ate them instead. It's worth a try at least and I would rather they ate themselves to death than you killed them. Alison