Snail Away

Last spring I noticed that there were snails in our backyard.  I thought that was strange because we lived miles from the nearest natural water source.  I picked a few of them up in a jar and pitched them across the street in the "retention" pond that never held water.  That worked for a few days, but soon, there became so many snails that I would never be able to pick them all up. I figured that they would go away on their own and decided to just leave them alone.

That ended up being a bad idea as the snail population continued to grow and I could no longer ignore the little pests as they were doing a lot of damage to our lemon tree, tomato plant and other vegetation in our backyard.  They had also migrated to our front yard as well.  That's when I decided to research the best way to get rid of the pesky mollusk.  Thankfully, I wasn't the only one with a snail problem.  I founded out that they tended to show up in sandy soiled yards with a lot of moisture.  That made sense to me as our entire yard was sandy and the neighbor behind us had started watering nightly.  Since two of his sprinklers were positioned behind our fence, we ended each evening with a soaked property line right where the snails were the worst.

After doing a lot of research, I decided to use an organic snail bait that would end my snail problem without harming any other living beings.  Unfortunately, it didn't help.  The snails were just as abundant as ever and I was growing tired of them. There was a reprieve in May as it was one of the driest months in Florida history leading to a severe drought which in turn led to a restriction on how much water could be used for watering lawns.  Soon, our snail problem was eliminated naturally, and I was glad to be rid of the pest.  

Even though I was happy for the reprieve, I knew it wouldn't last.  June and July brought the rainy season and the return of my least favorite shelled animal.  Last weekend, I read that the best way to get rid of them was to bury a plastic container filled with beer in the high traffic area.  Supposedly, snails were attracted to yeast and would crawl into the ground level container and drown.  I had high hopes which were soon dashed when three days later there were no snails to be found in the beer, but dozens of them on the fence and on the east side of the house.

At that point, I decided to stop playing nicely and finally bought real "snail bait" from Lowe's.  I knew that it wasn't the most humane way to stop the snails, but it guaranteed that it would work.  It's been a week and I have already noticed a difference.  There are very few snails on the side of the house or fence and almost none on our plants.  Next time, I won't even try any home remedies or organic products. Sometimes you just have to play hardcore, and I guess getting rid of snails is definitely one of those times.