Thursday, April 26, 2012

Escargot

Gromit has developed a new, unsettling hobby. Catching snails.

Every time it rains here (and it has been raining a lot lately) there seem to be an army of snails that come out of nowhere to invade our front lawn. We have tried to keep them under control by dropping them into a bucket of ammonia water, but it seems like we can never get them all.

During this past rain spell we noticed a few snails in the backyard, and Gromit has noticed them as well. This morning he greeted me at the back door with a snail in his mouth. Yuck!

I told him to "leave it" and he seemed to listen to me. He sat, pouting, at the edge of the lawn staring at a snail climbing up the brick garden wall. He even went over to check it out and left it alone. Since it appeared that he got the message to leave the snails alone I went inside to get ready for work. When I came back outside he again greeted me with a snail in his mouth and a dirty beard.


He doesn't chew on them or anything (at least not that I've seen) but this is still a gross new hobby. Kind of cute, but still gross.

So, we obviously have a snail problem and clearly we aren't solving it by dropping them into our bucket of ammonia water (a remedy I read about on the Internet). Anyone have any ideas on how we can better control snails? It has to be something pet-friendly since Gromit likes to put them in his mouth.

Thoughts?