The snail is unacceptable as a pet, even if the crime writer Patricia Highsmith saw things differently. But Ms. Highsmith's weakness for highballs and other alcoholic treats so thoroughly clouded her judgment that we can safely disregard her presumed objection in this regard, which she can no longer voice anyway. We will, however, return to Ms. Highsmith's style of murderous inventiveness.

Patricia Highsmith has sadly been dead for more than 30 years. The snails she once cherished are not, and they all wallow in our Transylvanian garden. If nothing is done about it, they will rule it after our own demise in less than 30 years. That is, if anything is left of this garden by then.

It's a rather slimy, massive crawling frenzy that takes place inside him after every downpour, in every direction. Every direction is wrong. Apparently, snails copulate compulsively and hermaphroditically with each other. They're welcome to do so, as far as I'm concerned; my moral objections are minimal. I consider myself open-minded regarding all sorts of diverse matters and am sexually unprejudiced, as long as the satisfaction of needs is consensual. That is clearly the case with snails. Unfortunately, quite successfully.

The Spanish slug, for example—a rather superfluous mollusk, as gardeners might see it—lays up to 400 eggs per clutch. I got this information from the website "The Living World of Mollusks," which should know. Even more helpful is their note: "As Hermann Löns already described in 1911, slugs taste extremely disgusting, which is likely to repel many predators." If such a predator does manage to overcome its aversion, like a hedgehog, it apparently has to roll the slimy, unappetizing morsel in soil first so that it can then swallow it—thus coated in soil.

Intrigued, I consulted Hermann Löns: Did he perhaps taste it himself to definitively ascertain the revolting taste of the slug? His contribution to the 4th supplement of the Hannover'sches Tagblatt of June 4, 1911, begins with the irrefutable words: "There is something wonderful about a soft, warm rain, especially when it stops soon."

Here follows a lovely, unfortunately all too familiar, piece of nature observation after the rain: "Even the long, thick, black, homeless snail here in front of my left shoe looks as if it has just had a fresh waxing. A moment ago it was crawling along dull and tired, looking like an old, dusty grease boot and dragging a whole clump of dry earth around at the tip of its abdomen; but now it is shiny and clean and as cheerful as a snail can be."

I don't know if Hermann Löns was wearing boots on that occasion, who might have been masturbating them, or how good old Hermann knew how a snail signals pleasure. Unlike Löns, I would have immediately shifted the toe of my left shoe forward. And the right one too, if that hadn't helped.

Although Löns' essay, presumably intended to be humorous, appeared under the title "A Disgusting Animal," such murderous impulses were foreign to him. He found slugs downright "charming" (even though he knew that their "character" was not "without malice"); he actually couldn't resist tasting their slime. Seriously.

The esteemed proto-Green, full of admiration for the beauty of creation in all its forms, was for a time—like Patricia Highsmith—obsessed with snail breeding. This had detrimental effects on his social life: from then on, he was "anything but a pleasure to all other people." Among other things, he was no longer a suitable lover for a lady he adored—the nature lover's hobby was simply too disgusting.

This stemmed from Löns's growing research interest in finding out why the generations of snails he raised ("this unreliable rabble") were always born differently colored, striped, half-striped or monochrome, without him initially being able to explain it.

Furthermore, during his student job as an animal keeper in Münster, he had learned that the animals entrusted to his care at the local zoo had little inclination to accept his offer of slugs. It wasn't just the marabou stork that showed open rejection. Löns completely lost favor with the ostrich: it initially swallowed a slug, but then spat it out in a high arc, "behaved extremely indignantly, and hasn't trusted me since."

Or via the slug. Löns then took one to his index finger and licked its slime. The result was slug-like: "Firstly, I behaved like an ostrich, secondly, I had to drink a cognac, and when that didn't help, a bitter liqueur, and then another, thirdly, I lost my appetite for three days, and fourthly, the affection of a young girl to whom I, in my incredible folly, informed of my experiment."

Enough of the "snail delicacies" of Löns, known today primarily as a poet of the heath and local regions, who nevertheless took a rather fondness for the garden slug, especially because of its "very long-stalked, but all the more faithful eyes." As a hint at the all-too-true background of the following scenes, which are not for the faint of heart, we take away that hardly any other animal with discerning taste would eat the garden slug (the slug itself, however, as the shocking evidence in our garden shows, is not entirely averse to cannibalism – further proof of the questionable legitimacy of this life form).

Certain specialized, exotic duck breeds are said to have the audacity to devour slugs with great relish; supposedly, one can even hire such hardy specimens to eradicate the pest in one's own garden. Here in Kleingroßdorf, we have absolutely no means of hiring contractors to feast on our property at exorbitant prices. What we do have, however, is my summer Saxon duck. And she possesses killer instincts that put some of Patricia Highsmith's murder plots to shame. To a very deep shade, the kind that only hangs over the abyss of slug hell.

"They're back!" – A sharp cry of dire need penetrates from the garden into my dark, twilight room, where I am sleepily trying to make peace with the new day, which, in my estimation, still has only a few hours left, but admittedly already boasts sunshine in most of the garden.

My summer Saxon, an early caretaker, wanders there, speaking solicitously to stunted shrubs, holding encouraging conversations with well-behaved youngsters, and not sparing a gentle admonition when a sapling, despite all the attention it receives, lacks the desired thriving. My summer Saxon talks to her garden. To every bud, every cutting.

She has nothing good to say about slugs. Only this cry, after that rainy night: "They're back again!"

Deeply concerned for my wife's well-being, I rush from my disheveled bed. Who exactly is back? Bears, wolves, wild boars? Merciless, utterly alien beings who want to abduct my wife to perform horrific experiments on her magnificent, paralyzed body—his defenseless victim—aboard their mothership in lifeless space?

Well, they're "just" snails, but they're everywhere and completely foreign to us. Yes, there we have it, yet again. Or rather, not anymore, since snails like lettuce and happily eat it.

I look at the snails, scantily clad as I am, almost as naked as the snails that caused the scream. I try to say something comforting. I can't find it. Only: "Wow, there are so many! That's totally disgusting!"

The thought of breakfast is the furthest thing from my mind. I look into my summer Saxon woman's eyes. I always enjoy doing that. But today, something sparkles in them, and there's only one word for it: murderous lust.

“Exactly,” she says. “Too many. Far too many.”

Then she resolutely asks for beer. Not even eight in the morning, and she hardly drinks at eight in the evening either. But she wants beer. Not for herself. For the snails.

Now I make sure there's always beer in the house. Honestly, not to be able to ward off mollusks at any time. Be that as it may, I can fulfill my summer Saxon's wish. As long as she doesn't want the whole six-pack.

And then it begins. My wife spills precious liquid in the garden, laying a trail of beer, then empties the rest of the can into a shallow dish. The devious plan: the beer and slime trails should merge. And lead to mollusk Armageddon: a generous portion of slug pellets, which my summer-loving Saxon, this otherwise so delicate elf, every butterfly's friend, has angrily heaped around the dish, like a funeral pyre at the end of the beer tasting.

The road to hell, they say, is paved with good intentions. Snails, quite obviously, have none: they neither want to nor can give up beer, for the yeasty aroma, the sweet, malty scent, is irresistible to them. Their punishment, snail hell, follows swiftly, as if some missionary teetotaler had devised it as a cautionary tale: dehydration after a drinking binge, brought on by snail bait; that's how the stuff works, at least the really nasty kind. It contains an active ingredient that irritates and overwhelms the snails' mucus cells until they cease to function. No more slime, no more drinking. Dry for good. Hallelujah.

There is a more "merciful" method of executing slugs with bait: This method uses a different ingredient to simply deprive the slimy creatures of their appetite. They retreat and starve. An apocalyptic diet. Not pleasant either, but apparently less toxic for anyone who might still want to sample the slug carcasses – the aforementioned hedgehog, for example, which, unlike the slug, we actually like, this prickly gourmet.

But it's not yet time for him to feast on a funeral supper. The snails, on the contrary, seem very much alive; they've rarely been seen so active. They're sliming one last time with all their might, crisscrossing and meandering, but ultimately with a single, clearly recognizable goal, which they all strive for, just as we know from human interactions: free beer! And it's tapped, that's for sure.

Oh my goodness! What a crawling, creeping, tangling, and knotting! I can hardly contain my amazement. From every corner of the garden, they're swarming towards the end, as moderately fast as cephalopods can manage – clumsy and dim-witted. But they're determined, clearly very thirsty. They're drawn to the puddle of beer like a notorious drunkard to the bar. Except their drinking spree doesn't lead to a monstrous hangover the next morning, but to something far worse. There will be no tomorrow for them. Only a painful death.

Not nearly painful enough, my summer Saxon thinks. She bends over the clumps of mollusks writhing at her feet with a diabolical grin, where the snails knot themselves together in an effort to overtake, overcome, and surpass their rivals.

"Come on, little snails, keep moving, there's yummy food for you, there's enough for everyone!" she calls out gleefully, generously scattering more snail bait around the puddle of beer and confiding in me how her grandmother used to split garden snails in half with a hearty spadeful. "It doesn't hurt them at all," she says, and it sounds regretful.

Then she decides that more beer is needed, because stragglers are emerging in large numbers from the undergrowth, slavishly obeying the alluring call of the devil, alcohol. I wonder if the free beer is already attracting alcoholics from all the surrounding gardens, mentally calculating their likely crawling speed: slugs are said to be able to move up to twelve meters per hour under favorable conditions. I fear for my beer supply. And I'm also starting to feel a little afraid of my summer-loving Saxon wife.

Phew. How glad I am that I'm not a snail, that I can drink my beer here in the garden undisturbed, without exposing myself to more than the usual, well-known dangers to life and limb! I leaf through the complete edition of Patricia Highsmith's diaries again, hide the spade, and resolve not to pay my horribly murderous wife any more compliments until the persistent rain showers subside. She sometimes finds them excessive. Downright sycophantic, perhaps.