Beer O'Clock

Hello, my name is Calamity Jane and I have a drink problem. Beer. Sweet, sweet beer. Greene King IPA, brewed locally, and I'm such a lightweight that I just can't handle it any longer. I've been through a whole can this week already and I just don't know where to turn.

You see it all started with the snails. Casa de Calamity is a Mecca for snails. They come backpacking from all over the neighbourhood, they bring their friends, they bring their families. Some nights you just can't wander barefoot in the garden without a sickening squelch underfoot. By day they hole up in the yuccas, confident in the knowledge that I can't get them, spiky and festooned with cobwebs as the yuccas are.

It all came to a head at the weekend as I was planting some new plants that I had treated myself to from Blooms of Bressingham. I had placed a Veronica in the spot where I wanted it and went off to find the trowel. When I came back there was a huge snail, sitting eyes akimbo right in the middle of the plant. Probably excited about the new eaterie in town. He took an unscheduled flight into next door's garden.

The next day I discovered that they had half eaten my new Echinops so without further ado I raided him indoors' beer supply, cut down some plastic bottles and sank them into the garden and filled them with beer.

The beer traps have been quite successful, many snails have died a slow but hopefully inebriated and peaceful death but I don't know what to do with them now. I can't exactly put them on the compost heap, and I'm wary of putting them in the bins for the bin nazis to find - our local council is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to refuse collection.

What is a mass murderer to do?