When two garden snails really like each other, they show it by mutual stabbing. They’re equipped with special love darts for this very purpose – they’re hermaphrodites and their love dueling, which goes on for hours, is how they exchange seed.
Throughout history, garden snails have loved hitching a ride with humans and this is how they’ve managed to reach some of the farthest corners of the Earth. They’re cute in their own right but their appetite can spell disaster for crops in areas where their natural predators are scarce. Good biodiversity is your friend – frogs, birds, lizards and many bugs will happily keep snails in check for you.
But if all else fails, you can always scare garden snails away with coffee grounds – they seriously dislike coffee. That’s probably for the best because the idea of fast-moving, twitchy snails is borderline disturbing.
Category Archives: Life in Slovenia
You’ll want some clover before you scratch your nose
I was walking on hot asphalt and so was this lovely lady.
Cars were about to join us.
Concerned for the lady’s safety, I volunteered my relocation services.
She objected by running.
Obviously, I insisted by picking her up.
She responded by spraying my fingers with a memorable fragrance.
Stunned but undeterred, I moved her to a safe location.
Just as we went our separate ways, I had a wild realization. (Can you imagine.)
The thing is, I’ve picked up many a stag beetle in the tiny little nature reserve that I run.
(Usually because they got indoors and wouldn’t leave.)
But they rarely ever ran from me, much less sprayed me.
Yet the lady I met today went full battle mode.
I couldn’t shake the thought that stag beetles behave differently around the people they know.
I feel deeply honored.
I would consider nicknaming my beetles if I hadn’t already done so.
PS. Clover is your lucky plant if you need to get rid of angry beetle perfume.
Turns out that 100% of woodpeckers…
…strongly approve of charity
Metal Day Vojnik, Spring Edition
My town’s very own original charity drive. I’m proud to have started it AND got to watch it take on a life of its own. Basically, we clean up trash and turn it into cash – I mean, what’s not to love 😀
A baby beetle
On this earth, there are 300 pounds of insects for every pound of human flesh. They fly, they dig, they swim, they bite and sting and spray. And they can make more babies in their lifetime than the whole of humanity ever has. We’re outmaneuvered, outgunned, outnumbered and sometimes outsmarted too. Just something to keep in mind 🙂
Possibly, nah definitely a leech
One of the best things about creating a wildlife pond is watching new critters move in. This spry little slinkie – unfairly known, as I’ve learned, as the horse leech – has managed to find my magic little lake. And quite possibly, my new friend is exactly what these waters needed… because right now, they’re ruled by voracious dragonfly larvae who could use a good old-fashioned fear of God put into them… Dragonflies can murder their way through a sizeable batch of tadpoles in a disturbingly short time – a relatively well-known fact in the ponding world. But they will also actively stalk small fish, which is much less known about them. Supposedly, horse leeches hunt dragonfly larvae, so maybe nature will balance itself out.
The little park
A little lake in a little pasture
A little friend in a little forest
Not sure what 2025 is going to be about but I know one thing: wetlands matter <3
Metal Day Vojnik
(I found a way to combine my love of charity and garbage. We Slovenians are weird like that.)
Če človek sam zbira odpadne kovine, ga prehitro vse mine! Tudi jaz sem se vdala, preden sem dovolj pločevink nabrala, da bi jih z dobičkom na odpad peljala. Če pa se zbiranja lotimo vsi, zlahka v zlato pretopimo smeti! Dober teden smo si dali, da bomo kovinske odpadke ločevali, kaj dlje bi s kupom praznih konzerv le stežka zdržali. Kovinske pokrovčke, konzerve, žice, tudi kak star plug – vse to bomo zbrali ter 23. septembra na kup pripeljali. Nato se bomo vsi skupaj veselili, saj se ne bomo le navlake znebili, ampak tudi mnogo dobrega storili! Izkupiček bomo namreč za šport in duševno zdravje otrok namenili, pa še okolje bomo lepše za sabo pustili!
“Metal dej, povej naprej! Za šport, okolje in zdravje gre zdej!”
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Music “Power of Darq Ice” by @DarqIce
“You’re the first one who didn’t take me for a wh*re”
Nina studied me for another moment. Then she let it pour about what usually happened when people found out she was Ukrainian. She’d been living in Slovenia for years and holy crabs did she have stories.
Back then, the Slovenian word for female Ukrainian was synonymous with prostitute. I’m being serious. When people said Ukrajinka they meant prostitute, and the implications were solid.
Like when a cop checked Nina’s papers on a sleeper train, closed the cabin door and whipped out his junk. Nina pointed back at the prick pointing at her and asked what it was, perhaps a pencil, did she need to sign something? The cop didn’t appreciate the wit, they rarely do, and he ordered the train be stopped and the defiant Ukrajinka hauled off to a deserted train station at two in the morning. Nina said alright I am a hooker, bought and paid for, and you sir are about to find out what happens when you mess with mafia property. Then Nina was escorted back on the train and she didn’t need to sign anything.
Continue reading “You’re the first one who didn’t take me for a wh*re”
Live from Slovenia: People queuing to have their balls and/or tits tattooed yellow and blue
While this seemingly unprovoked campaign of aggression against the Ukrainian people that Alec Baldwin started and Vladolf Putler continued was not exactly what we had in mind when we said enough with this corona shit already can we please move on to something new, it managed to achieve the impossible:
Bringing Slovenians together. Resigned to sticking to our bitter divisions until further notice, we suddenly found ourselves united in the belief that:
– Ukraine must be accepted into the European Union with immediate effect and retroactively made its founding member.
– As soon as this blows over, Ukraine needs to be installed as some sort of supreme king-president-patron saint of NATO, somehow. We haven’t worked out all the details yet.
– Ukrainians are the best. They make other nations proud. The bravest, coolest and inevitably, given the former, the hottest people of them all. They are the lesson in toughness, resilience, well-placed national pride and, apparently, the answer to the all-pervasive thirst that everybody needed. Now this is how you defend your country and win over everybody’s heart and all that it powers.
Continue reading Live from Slovenia: People queuing to have their balls and/or tits tattooed yellow and blue