Evolution of the slug beer trap: Part I

To us ruffty-tuffty gardening types, slugs are the spawn of Satan. They appear silently in the dead of night, devour everything, and retreat into some hinterland of the ninth circle to plot their next onslaught. You can practically hear their nasty, slurpy little laughs as they discuss the devestation wrought on their previous sortie.

So you lay traps for them. And as it turns out, they have one thing in common with yours truly - they're really quite partial to a beer.

Our first effort at a slug trap was a jam jar with a little of the cheapest crappy lager we could find in it. We buried this in the ground so that the top was level with the soil. The onrushing hordes of slithery swine would get distracted by the delicious fermented hops, dive in head first, and drown. Result.

The problem: when it rains, the jam jars fill up, diluting the beer and eventually spreading it out over the area they're meant to be protecting.

Curses, back to the drawing board...