Good story; thanks.
For the ducks they need drinking water like any other critter. The 'lake' was just for fun. I would fill a small wading pool with water so they could slosh around and play. Some ducks can only do the mating in/on water but I never watched to see if they did that.
When play time was over I watered the plants with the pool water and put the pool away until next time.
Back to slugs...
I had a thought but haven't researched this yet. Does anyone remember back in the 60s? 70s? when the gardening gurus would advocate capturing a bunch of say, grasshoppers, and popping them into the Oster blender with some water to make 'grasshopper liquid', strain, pour into a sprayer and spray the garden to keep grasshoppers away...anyone remember that? try that? think it would work with slugs? A blender full of slug liquid (eeewww,
throw the blender out after that; no thank you, I would not like a frozen Marguerita made in that
)...think it would work for slugs?
