Diesel Rogers Dining with Diesel www.sunlive.co.nz

The warm, humid summer has brought with it an extra invasion of flies and other pesky critters that have been driving me mad.
Not as mad as Ady, mind you, who feels the need to personally clamp her jaws around anything in the air, sized from the smallest midge to low-flying 737s.

It's like living with a Venus flytrap, only it's on four legs, travels at Mach II and has psychopathic tendencies.
The real fun started though when the boss found an infestation of giant slugs, late at night, crawling over the catfood dish. This could explain why Ralph is so skinny, the creatures of the night are taking all his tucker.
I bravely volunteered to clean it all up, so the slugs wouldn't have anything left. But this idea was rejected, as always, with my health and weight issues being cited.
So the boss decided to try Grandma's old recipe – flat beer in a saucer to draw the slugs in, get them off their trolleys and drown.
However, finding flat beer in the household was the first problem.
Every time a bottle was opened, it would ALL be consumed. It seemed for a while no-one had the willpower to leave any for the purposes of scientific research and pest control.
Eventually, however, the boss was convinced to sacrifice a few precious drops of his amber liquid for the cause.
So we set the bait and awaited nightfall to watch the trap unfold.
Unfortunately, Ralph decided that it must be Christmas, and taking a liking to beer, proceeded to quaff the lot before even the fastest creepy crawly in the garden could get a slug's tongue in.
The result of this was one skinny black mullocked cat, wearing his underwear on his head, dangling his feet in the fish pond and singing ‘I am a Walrus'.
I left before it turned nasty and he started shouting commands to the household, such as 'cook me some friggin eggs, bitch”. Or worse, auditioning for Riverdance on my head.
The slugs by this stage were far too amused to bother going near the trap. If you've never seen a slug rolling on the lawn laughing, it's worth catching.
Still at least it was not as bad as the night Ady ate all the poppies in the garden, but that's another story.
So the night ended peacefully – Ralph sleeping it off on top of the barbecue with the spatula up his nose; the slugs happy, healthy and entertained, vowing to return the next night, hoping for a repeat performance and making plans to bring popcorn and drinks; and me thinking, I might have to sample the flat ale myself.
My good old mate Johnny the Aussie butcher boy has also been doing some research, and I must say I was a little offended when I was not invited to test his hamburger patties (see the female boss's column) he was at least kind enough to offer me a bone that reminded me of a picture sent to me by a ‘pommie' admirer. The things us kiwi canines miss out on.
Alright then my good people that's the lot from me this week, its after five and it's drinks time so I have to go and rip the lid of a cold one; once I try and work out how the opener works.
This will be a good thing as my young twolegger brother has not found out yet that some bottles do not have screw lids and as he could not find an opener, he and his mates broke the tops off.
You have to worry about that lad.