Strange white deposits!

Hello!

We opened up our garden storage box today, first time in maybe 6 months, and it’s covered top to bottom with these strange white deposits….

First glance it almost looks like little dried bird droppings but this is not somewhere birds can access easily and the deposits are stuck all over the sides and in odd places. Have googled and used Lens but can’t find any likely matches.

Quite a lot of slugs in there, could it be some kind of slug poop?! Or a strange fungus?

Photos attached below…. Any ideas would be very welcome :-)

Thanks,
Danielle

 

Looks very much like snail excreta. Have they been munching your labels or similar?

 

Hi! thanks for your reply.
I can’t see any evidence of label munching… everything on bottles and tubs is all intact, just covered in the white stuff!

Not seeing many snails there or shells. Lots of slugs though. Would slugs also poop the same way?

Hello, thanks for your ideas above, and I do apologise for the late reply myself as I didn't realise there had been new replies on the thread!

So, we cleaned everything out and so far nothing has returned. But, we also cleared away another part of the garden where we discovered a similar scene - loads of white poop things and overrun with slugs... so I'd say the culprits appear to be the slugs!

Thanks again for your replies and happy gardening!

 

If you drop a bit of vinegar on it, does it fizz? I'm thinking snails might be eating limestone for their shells and pooping it out. A proper mystery! A local wildlife group might have some ideas.

 

Yes.
I think I'd take everything out clean it thoroughly remove any inhabitants and then see if the mess returns.

 

We had that under a tree that sparrows used as a latrine.

 

This was inside a closed cabinet (and there was a LOT of it!) so we ruled out any sort of bird early on. Even though we have tons of Sparrows elsewhere in the garden.... definitely think it's the slugs :D

Best wishes
Danielle