Slugs in my Dryer and Between my Toes

I can’t think of many things more disgusting than slugs. Some might not consider the Shenandoah Valley to be “The South” but this New Yorker sure does! There are very few days when slugs are not sliming around my yard. Winter, spring, summer and fall, slugs can be found. I hate slugs. Hate is not a word I toss around lightly. Hate is not a word I like to hear my kids say. I hate slugs.

I have to warn you ahead of time, if slugs cause you great amounts of discomfort, you may want to stop reading now, and just know that I have suffered greatly because of the existence of slugs, and you may continue on your merry way.

I have learned that on those perfect mornings in the spring, when I grab a hot cup of tea, and head out to wander around my yard, looking for blooming flowers, budding trees, and to watch the sunrise, that it is not a good idea to go barefoot. On some mornings it is not even a good idea to wear flip-flops. Nothing ruins a good sunrise more than slugs between my toes. It sets the mood for a pretty horrific day as well. On many occasions, I start my walk around the yard, sleepily sipping on my tea, enjoying the quietness of a sleeping house, and sleeping neighborhood – only to be disrupted by a slimy slug with its exploding guts oozing out between my toes.

If the picture of this is too much for you, you may want to stop now, because oozing slugs between my toes is nothing compared to the day I found a dried crusty slug in my dryer!

This actually happened to me about a year ago or so, but I was out doing yard work the other day, and because of all of the slugs that I encountered, I have been reliving the Dried Crusty Slug in my Dryer Nightmare.

I do a lot of laundry. Laundry is quickly becoming the bane of my existence, and I am in the process of getting rid of most of my Little Nuts extra random clothes that they don’t really wear very often because I just can’t handle the amount of clothing that the 7 people in this house have. I complained about it recently in this post. Anyways, I think on this particular this day I did something like 3 loads of laundry. At one point, I noticed a splotch, like a long dark smear at the bottom of the dryer door, close to where it seals. I thought it was kind of strange, but it didn’t seem to be getting on the clothes, so I thought it was a sticker or something. Then when I looked closer, I thought it was candy or a crayon because it was thick and when I touch it, it was hard. I peeled it off and looked at it. Then, realizing what it was I threw it and screamed so loud the kids came running in to see what happened. I was freaked out beyond belief that I just peeled a nasty dried slug off the inside of my dryer door!

How did a slug get into my dryer, onto the door and squished, exploding all over three loads of clean clothes, you ask? Well, I didn’t do laundry for several days, because I was doing the change of season clothes swap for a few days, and was waiting until I was done. This is a project that takes me way too long, and I think I have complained about it before. Hence me getting rid of several garbage bags of clothes this fall. Anyways, my reasoning is that the nasty foul beast from the darkest recesses of all things dark and evil found its way into my dryer vent. The dryer vent outside did not close all the way because it had dryer lint build up around it.

The foul creature known as The Slug, slimed its way up my dryer vent into my dryer and was hanging out on the door by the very edge and when I opened the door to put clothes in, it moved just enough to be squished when I closed the door, and have its guts splattered all over my dryer & clean clothes.

Um, Eeewww! Um, Gross! A year later I am still suffering nightmares, and may never be the same again.

This is the main reason why we don’t hire contractors to often to work on our house. Yes, the dried slug in my dryer is caused by a contractor that we hired 4 years ago to do things that we couldn’t do…or things that we thought they could do quicker than us. We hired a guy to change out our windows and do the siding on our house and he did such a lousy job, we have been cleaning up after him and fixing his mistakes for the past 4 years. (I could also talk about the foulness that is this man all day and you still wouldn’t know the 1/2 of it – so I will just leave it at that)

When he did the siding around the dryer vent, he screwed it up pretty bad. The siding around the entire thing is at least an inch away from the vent and the old siding can still be seen around the vent. Mr. Gross Contractor Man just gobbed in huge amounts of caulk around and under it. So there were huge gobs of caulk just under the little door that opens, and closes that stuck out enough to catch little pieces of lint. Eventually quite a lot of lint built up,  and kept the door from closing – hence a slug climbed into my dryer vent.

So I got a knife, and cut the caulk off around the dryer vent, cursing the contractor the whole time. I would not want to be that man as much as I cursed his name. Then I dragged the vacuum cleaner outside and vacuumed tons of lint that got caught on the inside of the vent. I finished off The Slug in the dryer clean up by scrubbing the entire dryer, every last bit of it was scrubbed and sanitized. Then scrubbed and sanitized again. Oh, and did I mention that I scrubbed and sanitized it? Yeah, I did that too. Then I threw the rag away. After that I  rewashed three loads of laundry. Fun.

So after grabbing on to many slimy slugs the other day – with gloves on of course, I was suddenly swept back in time to the day of The Slug in the dryer. I dropped my rake and ran over to my dryer vent to make sure it was still closed, that no lint was building up, and that there was no way a slug could get into my dryer vent ever again.

I was pleased to find out, and happy to report that there is no lint building up around the dryer vent, and there is no way that any slug can get into my dryer again. I will continue to check my dryer vent for lint, and slugs for the rest of my life. You might want to think about checking yours out too, just to make sure.