Escars got to GO

I may not be the most tolerant of people at times. But I do try to be charitable. I turn a blind eye when one of the chooks demolishes a chili plant. I don't mind the fruit bats gorging themselves silly on my guavas and mangoes night after night. I allow the wretched wasps to build their mud condos all over my house because they do such a good job rounding up the spiders and caterpillars for their babies.

But the thing which sets my blood boiling is the nightly, ritualistic, denuding of my veggie patch by those slimy, stealth like, slug faced molluscs that call themselves, Snails.

Don't be fooled by their cute whiskery apperance here either. Midnight torch raids have revealed a revelry of ruminating renegades. Marigolds droop, caught in a slick skin of slime like something out of Ghostbusters. Whole rows of seedlings are eradicated in less time than it takes to say What's Up Doc?

Honestly, I have enough in my back yard to start my own French bistro.

Apart from actually eating them, I've tried everything organically, humanely, ethically, possible to encourage their retreat. They have refused and in doing so have thrown down the gauntlet, or at least they would if they had hands instead of just one great oozy foot. 

And so I make this last plea before going into head on to eye stalk battle; can anybody help me?

- Is there a full proof, non toxic, safe to man and beast but not slug, way to annihilate these little nuisances and leave my veggies alone?

- Can one safely feed snails steeped overnight in vinegar and Duff beer to ones chooks?

- Do snails understand the stratagem of warfare?

- Is there such as thing as snail sized barbed wire available at Bunnings?

And what does this post have to do with writing? Well, if I spent less time hunched over in the pouring rain night after night, scouting for and consigning said snails to a beer bath, I'd have a darn sight more time to write, wouldn't I?

Rightie oh, time for patrol...