Slugfest

Eight

This year’s most ballyhooed product was SlugFest, a supposedly guaranteed slug repellent. While that might not register high on the wish lists of most people, to a gardener, it ranked right up there with world peace. And if it worked, its creators could make a fortune—gardeners were constantly looking for a magic bullet to keep the little critters from munching expensive plants and leaving silvery trails all over the garden like so many chalk-outlined bodies. Copper wire, baking soda, beer in shallow containers—the last was my favorite method for dispatching the little buggers. Showing no preference for imported or domestic beer, they slithered into the containers and died with a buzz on. On one hand, plenty of humans wouldn’t mind going out that way, and it beat being crushed under the heel of a garden clog. On the other, disposing of a container of bloated, decomposing slugs was not one of the most fun things I’d ever had to do. Where do you put them? Do you bury them? Say a few words? Leave them out for the birds to deal with? I did that once and then worried I’d caused a nest of chickadees to be born with fetal alcohol syndrome or the avian equivalent.

SlugFest’s booth was six times the size of Primo’s, but as of Wednesday, no one had seen anything other than their rotating hologram, a slug inching toward a hosta and then vanishing, and half a dozen female employees, decked out in salmon-colored polo shirts and khaki pants so unflattering it was a wonder any of them took the job.

Rumor had it that Scott Reiger, the company’s founder, was close to a major distribution deal with an international chemical company, but no samples were on display and no one had gotten as much as a whiff of the actual product for fear that it would be ripped off.

“We’re in a good spot, strategically,” Nikki said. “He’ll bring a lot of action our way.” That’s what we all wanted—action.