FOR the last few weeks, something has been invading my garden every night in order to slowly murder my marigolds.
A slithery, slimy something. Or rather somethings.

Every night they emerge from wherever they’ve been hiding all day, creep stealthily up steep flower pot sides and systematically chomp and chew their way through each fresh leaf and shoot.
Not content with eating every single leaf on the eight plants I started off with, the murderers have now moved on to severing the flower heads from the stalks – as if the poor plants hadn’t suffered enough.
Each morning it’s like I’ve wandered into a video nasty.
I caught the beasties red-handed (should that be red-suckered?) the other night.
Going out after dark, I found 15 snails and three slugs on what remains of the eight plants.
Not being one to kill unnecessarily, I picked off each slithery creature and lobbed them down the bottom of the garden, where they can do what they want to the overgrown flowerbeds.
They probably enjoyed their brief flight.
Ironic, isn’t it? My gardener (ahem... husband) having left me for another woman last year, I’ve let the garden slide rather, so the already mature flowerbeds now resemble an untamed part of the Malaysian jungle.
Trees, bushes, grasses, buttercups, dandelions, roses, unidentified weeds galore – they are all flourishing in abundance, unmolested by small slimy things.
If anyone comments on its unruly nature, I tell them it’s a wildlife garden, complete with family of badgers and colony of bats. No-one seems surprised.
Yet as soon as I decide a few flowers in a couple of pots will look nice on the decking, the snails see it as an invitation to a nightly ‘all you can eat’ buffet.
Before you suggest it, I’m totally against pesticides, pellets and other poisonous potions of any kind. Even salt is out.
I guess I’ll just have to put up a sign and start charging them.

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