infestation

i believe we have an infestation on our hands. actually, it's in my flower garden. the demon = snails. here were the first signs:

flowers completely stripped. i mean, there is an entire section of flowers that just completely disappeared! completely gone. and then there was the not so delicate lacework patterns in the leaves of my hollyhocks...this is out of control. i called the local garden center and asked them what to do. they told me to pull as many snails off of the plants as i could and get some snail bait. here's the problem. the majority of snail bait is lethal to animals and i don't think my boys would be very happy if i put annie dog at risk for a few pesky snails! the garden center told me about a snail bait called sluggo...and it's safe for pets. we jumped in the car and went to get sluggo. then max and jake and i set out to remove as many snails as we could.

the searching was easy...they were EVERYWHERE!

do you see how many snails there are?? it's insanity i tell you. we got as many as we could find and a rough count was...get this...96. WHAT?! these disgusting slugs are eating my flowers and plants and destroying my garden!! gross. we did the only thing we could...salted the little buggers and left them for dead.problem solved? here's the kicker. the next morning i went to check out our progress and see if we had any stowaway's that somehow got missed. i found 32 more...in just a few minutes. what's the deal? over the past 2 days i think our total is up around the 150 mark and growing. not as many, mind you. but at almost any given time i can find 2 or 3 just hanging out...munching on my plants. i hope the sluggo does it's job and that sometime this year i'll have flowers to enjoy. (i went and replanted the missing area...keeping my fingers crossed!)