?'s on Runner ducks...

[Pollo Blanco]

Thank you! I wish I were closer to one of them. The closest is around 90 miles to the right of me.

Island Country?

 

[ChickensForEggs2500]

Island Country?

Oh no did I get my directions mixed up again? No, I'm near Seattle. Haha!

 

[Pollo Blanco]

Oh no did I get my directions mixed up again? No, I'm near Seattle. Haha!

Had more to do with which direction I was facing when I read your post.

 

[AprilsZoo]

I think that the Pacific Northwest is the slug capital of the world.

Absolutely! And they‘re monsters, too— utterly HUGE!! No joke.

When we first moved to Bainbridge Island, WA (from southern Arizona) my college-aged son moved there with us. A month or two after we moved in, he came inside one day & the following exchange ensued—

Son: “There’s a massive slug right outside — it’s this big” holding his hands a good 8-9 inches (yes, inches!) apart.

Me: “Honey, there’s no way... are you sure it’s not a weird stick or something?”

Son: “It was moving Mom... go look...”

Me: <tying my shoes>“Slugs aren’t that big honey... maybe it’s a little garden snake?” I went on to remind him that I’d be surprised if he’d ever even seen a slug before... it’s not like they tend to be found in the desert.

Son: <now getting rather indignant> “It’s not a snake! It. is. a. SLUG! Are you gonna go look or not?”

Me: “Okay— show me...”

We proceed to walk outside and there on the front step is the biggest, grossest, slimiest SLUG I’ve ever seen! I just about fell over! I quickly ran back into the house to find something to provide scale. I found an unsharpened pencil and went back outside, cell phone out & ready to take a picture... I put the pencil down and this thing was easily over an inch longer than the pencil. I took the picture & posted it to Facebook with the caption— The slugs here could carry off a small child! It would stretch forward and bunch up, crawling along. Then it would stop, raise up, seem to “look” around, antennae wiggling, slowly lower again & go a little ways more. He had apparently crawled across the walkway & up the concrete step— a total of about 15 ft or so from where my son saw it.

To this day, if I say anything like “no way— couldn’t be”, he will remind me: “Remember the slug? You didn‘t believe that...remind me, how did that end up again?“ (Yes, he’s a smartalec— he should’ve majored in sarcasm )

In the four years we lived there I never got used to to seeing those nasty things. I *wish* I could’ve had ducks to eat them all, but I’m pretty sure I would’ve needed way more ducks than zoning would have allowed. I’m not sure there were enough ducks in the entire county to eat them all!
The most I saw in a single place was under a ~4-foot-long garden log we pulled up bordering the yard. We tried counting them—We stopped at 250! And that was just the ones bigger than a dime— there were hundreds, possibly thousands, more tiny ones hiding in the decaying grain of the wood.
Yuck!

 

[ChickensForEggs2500]

When I was younger, my family and I gathered up over 2 lbs of slugs from our yard, (there were many more!!) for a friend with chickens. She cut them up with scissors and tossed them with yoghurt as a treat for them. I wonder if my chickens now would like that....

 

[AprilsZoo]

When I was younger, my family and I gathered up over 2 lbs of slugs from our yard, (there were many more!!) for a friend with chickens. She cut them up with scissors and tossed them with yoghurt as a treat for them. I wonder if my chickens now would like that....

Yeah... no way I could do that. Even using a long spade to cut them in half made me gag.
We flicked off the ones from the wood board into boiling water with a healthy squirt of dish soap added. They seemed to die instantly with none of the snot-like slime they usually excrete as they die. They just curled right up.