My Driving Test didn't include this!
The Gastropods' Party
This week, I’ve spent a few days working away from home. It provided a couple of nights during which the slugs and their close cousins, snails could munch our garden to their little hearts’ content. They had respite from me, prowling the flower and vegetable beds in the evenings, salted water container and picnic fork in hand.
The sight which greeted me this morning when I took my first cup of strong coffee into the garden was predictable. Shredded leaves were everywhere and a few snails still clung to stems and stones in the flower bed, dew glistening on their shells.
These stragglers from an all-night Gastropods party were yet to return to their daytime lairs, perhaps because they stopped to eat just one more leaf, too drunk on herbs to notice that day had dawned.
When I first drove my Toyota Starlet in the New Hebrides, the salesman warned me to avoid driving late in the evening.
“It’s the snails, mate. They’ll skid you off the road.”
I didn’t understand a word of what he was going on about. Had I heard correctly? I remember giving him a weak smile and waving happily as I drove my new car off the lot.
Pretty soon, a dinner invitation found me needing to drive after ten o’clock at night.
It is fair to say that I was, er …amply refreshed. And I departed my host’s house in very good humour. The night was warm. My window was wound down all the way. I reckoned a blast of air would combine with a hurriedly brewed and drunk cup of coffee to render me sober enough to make it home in one piece. If I felt less than competent along the way, I told myself, I’d sing. The added oxygen would surely make me safe.
The Toyota Starlet, as some of you may remember, was a small rear wheel drive saloon car. Although its engine was rather weedy in output, (between 50 and 60bhp, if memory serves), the crushed coral dirt roads around Port Vila encouraged tail-happy driving at very modest speeds.
Progress for the first half mile or so of my journey was accompanied by multiple ‘popping’ sounds. Maybe there was something not quite right with the engine. I’d investigate in the morning, I thought. But negotiating the very first corner involved a lurid slide with lots of wheel twirling by yours truly.
But I wasn’t travelling at all fast – honestly. I did get back to my flat safely, but found the episode disquieting.
When I went outside to look at my car next morning, all the wheel arches were splattered with snails – enormous specimens. In the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu) they emerge at night in such numbers that cars skid off the road when trying to plough through them!
These are the Giant African Land Snails - Lissachatina fulica which are highly invasive. They were only introduced a few years before I arrived there in the 1970s, but spread so fast. Not only did they prove to be a driving hazard, but their voracious eating habit disrupted Hash House Harriers runs. The runner laying the trail (the ‘Hare’) couldn’t set out his little piles of flour or shredded coloured paper the night before the run – it would all be eaten by the snails. So early morning trail-setting was obligatory – unless the Hare was willing to risk a post-run punishment for unclear trail marking.
Yes, the gastropod family may be fixing to take over our world. But not if I have anything to do with it!
Worry not. I am back on night-time Slug Watch in our garden.
⚠️🌚🐌🐌💥☹️