How do you kill a slug?
Don't all leap in. I know that slugs aren't that difficult to kill. You can stamp on them or pour some salt on the, - job done. But neither of these would work for my purposes.
In the Guardian today they had recipes involving unusual ingredients. One recipe called for a dozen slugs, cleaned of external mucus. Mmmm, sounds delicious doesn't it? But presumably the slugs will have to be dead first. If they are still alive you would clear off the mucus and then more mucus would be produced. So you have to kill them, but you can't use salt: you don't want your slug dish ruined by being too salty - that would be disgusting. You can't stamp on them, because then there would be nothing but mucus, which you'd have to clean off. So how do you kill them, leaving them mucus free and all in one piece. Stick a pin in them? But where would you need to stab a slug to ensure killing it and even if you knew where the slug's Achilles heel was then if you stabbed it, wouldn't slug mucus leak out of the slug, leaving you eventually with nothing but a slug bag, meaning you'd miss out on all the delicious internal slug nutrients, which is the only reason you were eating the slugs in the first place. You could try and knock the slug over the head, hoping that would kill it, but chances are you would only stun the slug, or overdo it with the shoe or cosh and be back to the splattered slug problem. You can't poison the slug or your slug dish will be poisoned. I don't think you'd want to wait for your slugs to die of old age - they would surely be all wrinkly and stringy. You can't shoot them with a big gun.
Drowning them is perhaps an option - you would at least clean the mucus off at the same time, but it doesn't seem a very humane way of dealing with the problem. And I have a feeling slugs might do OK underwater. They seem to like hanging around in the rain and stuff. And even if they would drown it seems a cruel way to take them out. Them struggling for breath, their whole life flashing before them - their whole life of being a slug, crawling in some dirt and eating a lettuce. I am not sure I could put one noble slug through such a demise, let alont 12, just for me to get something delicious to eat. I am going to stick to cat and dog pies.
