Be careful if you use beer. The Good Lady is a keen organic gardener, and in our old house in the city, she was the only one in the road that didn't use slug pellets. The result was that she ended up running a slug sanctuary. Of course, all the slugs for a mile around were poisonous, so there was no way a herd of hedgehogs could reach us to benefit from this. So she put out beer traps. I was keen on home brewing at the time, so there was the dregs from each brew, plus the bottom of the barrel, always lots of spare beer. And despite thousands of slugs having a happy death, it made little impact on the numbers.

Then one evening, she forgot to put the traps out. We were woken at first light by an ominous hammering on the back door. On opening it, the entire back yard was carpeted with quivering slugs, all holding placards saying "WHERE'S THE BEER?"