We’ve been eating lettuce, arugula and endive from plants in containers for a few weeks now. It’s been very nice. Then day before I found a slug on a leaf. I threw it away and washed the rest very thoroughly.

Last night I went out later than usual to pick for dinner, and found every last lettuce just crawling with slugs. I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen that many slugs before, even on the Olympia peninsula (mercifully, these were small slugs). This grossed me out so badly I nearly threw up- and it takes a lot to gross me out. I’m usually the one at the table grossing everyone else out. But this did it.

Never eating salad again. And definitely buying slug bait next time I go into town.

 A couple of my jobs are really near to the lake. About two weeks ago, there was a killdeer running around in the driveway of one, doing the fall down and play injured thing they do to draw people away from their nest. Today I went back there, and needed to weed a bed that I hadn’t touched for awhile. The killdeer got frantic, running around on the lawn behind me, dropping to play hurt. Then two young ones- fledged but still with some baby fluff sticking out between feathers- popped out of the shrubs and ran around! The mother started calling wildly. They peered at me for awhile, then ran around the corner of the house. The mother stuck around for awhile, cursing me loudly. She also flipped out when the babies decided to peer around the corner at me, except that time she ran at them to convince them to go back and hide! 

A killdeer, from Wikimedia Commons. Uploaded originally by hart_curt.