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I didn’t choose the slug life, the slug life chose me. It all started when a tawny-colored slug showed up on my porch when I was 4 years old. Instantly enamored, I gave him a name that only a kid could love: Foo Foo. I loved Foo Foo and considered him my first companion animal. I even built him a Lincoln Log cabin to live in, but much to my chagrin, he preferred my mom’s container garden. Most mornings, I’d see a glistening trail that I assumed led back to Foo Foo’s wife and kids.

Everything was fine in our world until one fateful family gathering. Word in the yard was that my uncle was going to do a magic trick. Magic? Yes, please! Elbowing my way through a gaggle of gangly arms and legs five cousins deep, I arrived just in time to hear my uncle say “abracadabra” and sprinkle salt on Foo Foo. I watched in horror as my Foo Foo melted into a sickening, greasy stain. I was inconsolable.

Foo Foo’s cruel death had a profound effect on me. It awakened my compassion and sparked a belief in the sanctity of all life. I became a bug bouncer, gently escorting insects from my house. No slug was ever again killed with salt or drowned in beer on my watch. I grew into a shooer instead of a squisher. To this day, I’m still awfully fond of slugs.

They are so fascinating. Did you know that slugs are actually mollusks as well as hermaphrodites? Having both sex organs allows each slug to lay eggs. Beneficial to the environment, slugs process decaying plants, turning them back into soil. And much like us, they analyze data to make such decisions as what to eat, with whom to mate and how to avoid danger.

They are also extremely active in the fall. So as autumn turns the trees into a riot of colors, we can expect to see four things: meteorologists overusing the word “brisk,” pumpkin-flavored everything, slugs laying their eggs in gardens and insects entering houses to wait out the winter. The good news is that there’s no need to resort to cruel methods to have a slug-free garden or an insect-free home.

Slugs are nocturnal and thrive in damp conditions, so refrain from watering your garden in the evening. This simple tactic alone can decrease slug damage by 80 percent. Installing granite rock around your garden and placing mint, lemon balm, pine needles, cosmos, sage or parsley in your garden will also deter any mollusks with the munchies.

If ants start moving into your house like they’ve rented it on Airbnb, find their point of entry and pour a line of cinnamon, red chili powder or paprika—they won’t cross it. To prevent stink bugs from sneaking in, remove window air conditioners and apply weather stripping around doors and windows. Spiders hate citrus, so rub a lemon peel on door and window frames to deter them. Place catnip sachets or bay leaves on top of shelves and other high surfaces to keep cockroaches away.

Like all animals, slugs and other tiny beings who are perceived as “pests” suffer when they are poisoned, trapped, drowned or otherwise killed. As Alan Gelperin, a researcher who has studied the memory and learning abilities of slugs, says, “Before you step on a slug, or sprinkle the poison, pause and consider the creature’s marvelous complexity and place in the scheme of things.”

In the scheme of things, there is always a humane solution to any wildlife conflict. So let’s save the salt for margaritas and the beer for football. And while you’re at it, treat yourself to a pumpkin spice soy latte. It is fall, after all.

Amy Skylark Elizabeth is a senior writer for the PETA Foundation, 501 Front St., Norfolk, VA 23510; www.PETA.org.

The post Living the Slug Life appeared first on PETA.

I don’t care what kids say—the school lunch lady is not trying to kill them. The federal government is. Well, I have my suspicions, at least. Many of the meals served as part of the National School Lunch Program are high in fat and cholesterol and contain considerably more sodium than fiber. They’re a heart attack in the making. I wonder if that’s why the American Heart Association has warned us that atherosclerosis—hardening of the arteries—begins in childhood and progresses into adulthood, at which point it can lead  to coronary heart disease.

© iStock.com/DebbiSmirnoff

Most schools serve the same artery-clogging slop that was served when I was a student and frozen meals still had to be baked in the oven. How can we expect students to take a health teacher’s “healthy eating tips” seriously when the school cafeteria is serving unhealthy foods?

Salisbury steak, pepperoni pizza and chicken nuggets need to go the way of film projectors and hand-crank pencil sharpeners. And fast-food corporations should also be expelled from schools—or at least suspended until they serve more plant-based meals.

As Dr. Neal Barnard, the president of the nonprofit Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, says, “Fresh produce, legumes, whole grains, nuts, and seeds are nutritional powerhouses that study after study has shown to be quite literally lifesaving .… [D]iets high in animal protein are associated with a fourfold increase in the chance of dying from cancer or diabetes—making heavy meat and dairy consumption just as dangerous as smoking.”

Responsible parents teach their children not to smoke because cigarettes cause cancer and other health problems. For the same reason, they should make sure their kids don’t get hooked on hamburgers and other unhealthy foods. Let’s put more emphasis on teaching children to eat vegan meals—at school and at home. Kids will gladly eat plant-based meals, such as pasta, veggie burgers and black bean chili, if they’re delicious as well as nutritious.

Knowing this, the Coalition for Healthy School Food created the Cool School Food program to develop, test and implement plant-based meals in school cafeterias. The program—which helped two public schools in New York implement the first entirely plant-based school menus in the U.S.—aims to make it fun and exciting for young people to try new foods and learn about their health benefits.

Food Is Elementary, another school program that was recently featured in VegNews magazine, is also working to introduce children to plant-based foods, which the kids prepare and eat as part of a curriculum established by the founder of the Food Studies Institute, a New York-based nonprofit that helps school cafeterias incorporate low-fat, high-fiber foods into their menus.

We need more programs like these. Students are fed up with the unappetizing, inhumane and potentially disease-promoting fare that passes as lunch in many school cafeterias. Last year, students at Theodore Roosevelt High School in Chicago boycotted school lunch in an attempt to persuade officials to serve healthier meals, including more fresh fruit and vegetables.

That’s hardly an unreasonable request. The school cafeteria is supposed to be a source of nourishment, not disease. This year’s National School Lunch Week, which will be observed in October, aims to remind “parents, students and school officials that a healthy lunch helps students power through the day!”

But how can we expect kids to make it through the day—and learn compassion and empathy—if they’re eating unhealthy animal-based foods? We need to teach children that “v” is for vegan and serve them healthy, tasty, cruelty-free plant-based foods that won’t cause them to heap scorn on the lunch lady.

Heather Moore is a senior writer for the PETA Foundation, 501 Front St., Norfolk, VA 23510; www.PETA.org.

The post Opinion: Too Many Schools Are Still Flunking Lunch appeared first on PETA.