...the classic Police song? Well, I have something a little different. And slimier.

I have 'Slugs in a Sprinklerhead'. Seriously. Yesterday afternoon, B and I went outside to start digging up part of the lawn to replace a sprinkler that decided to be a geyser instead.

So, DH breaks up the lawn around it and sets that aside and B & I start digging. And digging. And digging some more. We find rocks, we find worms. We even find a rather large root in our way. And we get to the top of the very broken sprinkler and I scrape a little of the dirt away.

That's when B notices the first slimy slug. We watch it for a moment and try to get it on the trowel we're using so that we can get it out of the way. B is unsuccessful so I ask her to pick it up.

You would not believe the 'ew' I heard from that little girl. Now, you must understand - I was not being a mean mommy. This is a child who collected 15 snails into a Lego tub about a month ago and did a science experiment (for school) about what surface would snails race the fastest on if given a specific diameter of circle to race in. She was picking up snails left and right and letting them crawl all over her. And in the course of that lesson she learned that slugs aren't anything foreign or yucky - they're just snails without shells.

Yet, she refused to pick them up. Finally I managed to get it on my trowel and smash it in the dirt behind me. Excitement over and we moved on to dig some more. That's when she noticed another slug coming out of the sprinkler. And we dispatched it in the same manner - waste time getting it on the trowel and then smashing it behind me (or DH stepping on them as he was trimming the rose bush behind me). We continue digging and unearthing some pretty nasty rocks. I even managed to lever one out that was almost as big as my hand. Now I know where they dumped all the rocks when they were leveling out my house foundation. I dug a lot of them up yesterday.

Anyway, we continue digging and we find another slug coming out of the sprinkerhead. We take care of it and just as I'm smashing that one, another is already coming out. Lather, rinse, repeat - this happens a few more times. By the time we reach the bottom of the sprinkler in order to unscrew and replace it we've killed 8 slugs. And we can see just past the dirt that we've got one more in there. Ugh.

So, DH comes and unscrews the sprinker and starts putting the new one in. That's when someone manages to see inside the sprinkler from the bottom (instead of the mud obscured top) and we find it's the Slug Resort in there. Big fat ugly slugs. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. We contemplate salt for a moment and then DH just throws the sprinkler in the trash which was picked up this morning.

Ew. I tried to get A (the creative one) to write me up a new song called 'Slugs in the Sprinklerhead' but she wasn't going for it. She wrote a limerick (a bad one) about the slugs but we didn't think that was good enough for publication, so I had to go with the prose here.

Slugs in a Sprinklerhead. So, my message is this - keep watch on your sprinklers and the minute one turns into a geyser, enjoy it if it's hot weather for a few minutes and then get down to work replacing it quickly. It will save water, keep your lawn happy and you won't have to deal with the potential of having a Slug Resort on your lawn.

Ew.