OK, a few of you might be tempted to off the neighbor’s four-legged poop machine. This post isn’t for you. This is about killing slugs in a way that won’t hurt people, plants or pets.

Traditional slug bait-and-kill products can be toxic to small children and pets. This is an issue at my house with two small children and my neighbors’ pets wandering around.

Salt isn’t a good idea; you don’t want it on your soil and you’ll never catch all the slugs. Traps laced with beer work if you refresh them each time it rains. The slugs I chucked over the fence in frustration — sorry, Tom and Lynn — crawled back for revenge.

Limiting the places slugs hide, such as under containers, helps. So does hand picking. But what I’ve found most effective and safe are products made with iron phosphate such as Sluggo and Escar-go. These lure the slugs in with tasty bait and then give slugs a deadly case of indigestion. It’s safe to sprinkle around everything, including vegetables. The slugs stop munching immediately and eventually “crawl away to secluded places to die,” according to my container of Sluggo.

Excellent.