The Phantom Slugs

A little history. I moved out of my parents house about three and a half years ago, and was the last of my parents brood of three to leave the nest. I left because, well my Dad was fed up of me being around (though he was glad I was there whenever he went on holiday, cos they had a house sitter), and Mum the previous year when I asked what she wanted for her 49th birthday, had said something along the lines of "I'm not sure, but I can tell you what I want for my next birthday, you out of the house". Granted it wasn't said angrily, but the message was clear.

So in May of 2002 I moved into a small 2 room flat (well okay, technically 3 room, but the loo/shower room might as well have been a closet it was so small). It wasn't much, but it was mine. It was also bloody cold in winter, but that's another story. Pretty soon though I discovered that I wasn't alone in the flat, I had slugs. I knew they were there, because the little bastards leave those glistening slime trails behind them.

Only these trails started in the middle of the floor, and swirled about in some bizarre pattern that probably makes sense if you're a slug, but to a human looks like the route that even a really drunk person couldn't walk in. And they ended in the middle of the floor too. No sign of an entrance, no sign of an exit, and absoloutely no sign of any actual slugs. So I called them phantom slugs.

Sure enough, every morning almost without fail, I'd wake to find some new slug pattern on the carpet in my lounge (always near my computer desk) and in my bedroom (always near my chest freezer, told you it was a small flat). But try as I might, I could not find how they got in or out and I could not find them. And believe me I looked!! No stone, desk, sofa, freezer, bed, bookcase or table wasn't overturned in the hunt for my elusive tormentors. Did I find them? Did I hell!

This went on for two years, until in August 2004 when I moved into this house. No more phantom slugs, they could go and slowly drive barmy the next resident of the flat. I walked into the utility room at the base of the house about an hour ago to get something from the freezer. The floor was covered in glistening slug trails that started and stopped in the middle of the carpet. No sign of how the slug arrived... no sign of how the slug left... and no slug! They're Back!!