Mr. Mead had a beautiful garden and he worked hard in it all day long.

Hour after hour he dug and dug,
And woe betide any snail or slug.
Whenever he found one, large or small,
He threw it over the garden wall.

Outside the garden wall, the pile of slimy, squashy snails and slugs grew larger and larger. Inside the garden itself grew stranger. The loathsome sight of the mammoth pile of slugs made the neighbors irate and caused Mrs. Mead to leave home.

Finally, Mr. Mead, distraught at the bizarre turn of events and appearance of his garden, hit upon an ingenious solution to entice the bothersome snails and slugs away. Soon a long trail of the creatures could be seen wending their way single file down the road that led out of town.

John Vernon Lord's imagination runs wild in this bright and colorful new picture book. In richly detailed Brueghel-like illustrations he tells a humorous and witty tale of how one man peacefully and cleverly rids his garden of rampant pests without doing harm to them or the world.