The Invasion Of The Slime Monsters

A short while back we took a trip to the Dollar Store. My main objective was to find some rubber snakes for my garden, thinking they might help dissuade the many birds that call our yard home from feasting inside our fenced vegetable fortresses.

In the past, there seemed to be an almost limitless selection of various rubber snakes prowling the aisles of the Dollar Store. On the particular day we chose to visit however, the only snakes to be found were the kind that, while already nearly life size, were designed to be soaked in a tub of water for several hours in order to produce an even larger version. I thought about it a moment, and decided even if it did rain, it wasn't like they would be soaking in a tub for hours on end, and besides, it was June. Chances are the periods of massive rain were probably pretty much over with. I grabbed two brightly colored snakes, and we headed home.

The next day the kids and I headed out to the garden, and selected what we thought to be the perfect location for our snakes to begin their journey through what we hoped would soon become neat little bird free jungles of vegetation. Each evening we returned to the gardens and moved the snakes, just sure we were fooling those pesky birds. Three days ago it began to sprinkle. It wasn't much, and despite the forecasters warnings, I didn't think it would turn into mass amounts of precipitation. We moved our snakes as usual.

It turns out the forecasters got it right. The next morning we arose, and looked outside to see nothing but sheets of water descending from the sky. We spent most the day inside, watching the digits on our weather machine rise as the rain bucket filled. By yesterday morning we had received just under an inch of rain in a 24 hour period.

Yesterday, during a brief break in the rain, I ventured outside to take a peek at my garden areas. There were the two brightly colored snakes, right where we had left them, only they weren't looking so mobile any more. They also weren't looking quite so svelte as the last time I'd seen them, just one day earlier. They were huge! I can only imagine the resident birds must have thought the gardens had been invaded by anacondas.

Not only were they huge, looking as though they had spent the entire 24 hour period gorging themselves on everything within slithering distance, but they were extremely slimy! It seemed that their foraging had taken them through a highly populated slug haven where they had blissfully rolled around in the slime before returning to their predetermined locations, and settling down for a nap, the slime oozing off their now vast bodies, and gluing the poor things to their places! They look disgusting!

The kids have chore charts, which contain a list of daily chores, including a variable chore, which changes daily, Today, I'm sure they'll be delighted that their variable chore will be entering the two garden areas, and removing the huge, slimy snakes. Thankfully, my children aren't quite so squeamish as I am when it comes to big slimy things. I'm hoping our next trip to the Dollar store will yield a fresh batch of snakes, which are not prone to unauthorized growth spurts when introduced to water.