I know how Florida feels. The buggers keep eating my lupins…
South Florida is battling a growing infestation of the giant African land snail.
The snail is considered one of the most destructive invasive species, feeding voraciously on more than 500 plant species.
They can also eat through plaster walls, which provides the calcium content they need for their shells.
Oh, right, a bit more serious than lupins, then…
I wonder what they taste like?
Just a thought…
Many years ago, at an impressionable age, I read the science fiction novel ‘Children of Morrow’, in which a mutant giant snail tries to feed on a child.
I’m slightly worried that the Florida snails are thinking the same thing about us.
Not sure what they taste like, but I do know that they smell awful!
Chicken!
The Giant African land snail in Florida is Achatina achatina, the giant Ghana snail bearing the Greek name for agate which its shell is said to resemble. It is an edible snail insofar as the West African forest-dwelling ethnic groups are concerned. (Pause for a second and think about that.)
They are true hermaphrodites (the snails, not the ethnics), with both functioning male and female genitalia. They produce over a thousand eggs a year and have no natural enemies other than the bacterium Aeromonas liquefaciens which also causes haemorrhagic septicemia in many cultured pond-fish, aquarium fish and salmonids.
Other Aeromonas bacteria cause a variety of nasties in humans including cellulitis, wound infections, acute diarrhoea, septicaemia, urinary tract infections, hepatobiliary, meningeal, and auricular infections and endocarditis. Nice beasties, aren’t they? Not the sort of things you’d want to spray on your lupins or vegetables.
So, if you’ve got a dose of Giant Ghana Land Snails, you’re stuck with them, although the Queensland Cane Toad hunters swear by the forceful application of a 3 iron as a solution to infestations of giant alien species. 🙄
I’m not convinced much by the ‘Organic’ movement, but if you need to deal with the slug and snail problem in your garden there is an Organic solution.
Chickens.
The buggers will eat practically anything and turn it into eggs.
Chooks won’t eat giant African snails!
How do I know this?
I grew up on a farm in what is now Zambia. We had a different sub-species of giant snail where we farmed along the northern reaches of the Kafue River. The snails LOVED the chook pellets and you could tell when they were gathered around the pellet feeders. Not one chook would go within a yard of the feeders, no matter how hungry they were. The snails stink and their slime repels all creatures.
I’ve seen people on the Oxford free cycle site offering them to people, at no cost of course.
John Gibson
SLUG PELLETS?