How to deal with slugs - organically

I was at a friend's daughter's 18th birthday party last night for a couple of hours (weird - was I really like that once?!) and got talking to my friend's neighbour (Isabelle) about the slugs in her garden. Now you might think that this isn't really the sort of thing that you'd want to be talking about at a party (one that you'd want to be at anyway!), but after a few minutes it got quite interesting. Honestly. That is, when she told me how she likes to dispose of them...with a pair of scissors, by cutting them in half.

She described very graphically what they look like in the middle when she does this. I couldn't help laughing of course, while my friend's face went ashen and screwed up into a wonderful grimace the like of which I've never seen before. He tentatively asked Isabelle why she does this and she replied "well, I just can't see the point of slugs, I mean what exactly are they for?". He suggested food for birds and hedgehogs. Isabelle protested that she doesn't have hedgehogs and that no birds go into her garden for fear of her cats, so she has no choice but to murder the slugs this way, if they aren't to munch their way through her plants. This way, she said, the slugs provide food for her plants!

The one thing I was intrigued by was how Isabelle (who looks like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, by the way) discovered this method in the first place. Did she just go out with a menacing look in her eye one night and decide to give them what for? Was it premeditated? Did she try everything else to no avail then have a Eureka! moment? Did she just want to know what it would feel like? Ed suggested maybe she was taking school biology lessons too far... Isabelle revealed that one night she was in the garden and just happened to have a pair of scissors in her hands. She saw a slug on one of her precious plants, tried to pick it up...and missed! The resultant squidgy feeling felt sooo good she hasn't stopped since!

Inevitably we got on to the subject of cats and birds and the fact that although we have two cats it doesn't stop the birds coming into our garden - we have a lot of trees with lots of berries that obviously make it worth the risk! Isabelle suggested that I am just a murderer by proxy, because obviously I 'benefit' (no remuneration forthcoming as yet) from the resultant little carcasses that I find on the back doorstep from time to time...she could have a point.