So I hit back. On the leaf.
That hidden snail shell hit the ground with a hard enough bounce to it for me to easily hear. Was that?! Oh absolutely. Ewww. (Crunch.)
And so I went down the line of leaves at the edge of the raised bed (of which there are many more than in this picture, but it does at least show some of the damage they’ve done) hitting the tops hanging over the lawn, knowing that in late afternoon they’d all still be on the undersides. I didn’t have to touch them and I didn’t have to poison them. (The main slug and snail bait is supposed to be animal friendly but it has been found not to be.)
I have an ancient pair of Birkenstock clogs that never enter the house these days but stop at the back door–so no worries about tracking in the slime.
This is for the peaches they ate right inside their clamshells. A satisfying, awful crunch. (Leaves swishing through air sound again.) Crunch. (Slap and swish.) Crunch. Again and again and again. Dozens of snails became fertilizer doing my yard favors rather than being this invasive species wreaking so much destruction. They’d devoured every single one of my Sharlyn melon seedlings that I’d so carefully babied.
I didn’t get them all but I got so many that it’ll be far easier to search through for the remainders without fear of the slimy horrible hordes dropping on me.
It was that simple. And it took me 29 years here to figure it out.