German Apartment Plagued By Serial Ding-Dong Ditcher; Turns Out It Was Just A Slug
Why do they always have to blame the slugs?
Some folks in Germany were tormented by a serial ding-dong ditcher, only it turned out that the culprit had far fewer vertebrae than initially thought.
Fewer as in none.
I have fond memories of ding-dong ditching when I was a kid. That's because, as a chronic rule-follower, that was the high-water mark of my adolescent debauchery.
Shoplifting and smoking a little weed? Nope, not for me.
Ding-dong ditching the crotchety old biddy who lived down the street? Count me in… but only one time because she answered the door and I got scared.
The thing that always fascinated me about ding-dong ditching was how mad it makes people. The reaction is often disproportionate to the minor inconvenience of having to answer your door. I mean, I get why people get mad about opening the door and having to stomp out a flaming bag of dog poo (which is so diabolical in its simplicity), but why do people get so mad when they open the door to nothing but tumbleweeds?
Well, ding-dong ditching is not just an American rite of passage. It turns out they have it in Germany, specifically Bavaria, too (though over there they call it "Der Ding-Dong Ditchen." …Probably).
According to The Guardian, people living in an apartment building called the police after they were repeatedly ding-dong ditched. Naturally, the assumption was that this was the work of some teenage pranksters.
That is, until someone bothered to check the building's bell and found that the actual culprit was a slug sliding up and down the doorbell panel repeatedly.
Bavarian residents called police over a mystery doorbell prank, only to discover the culprit was a slug repeatedly triggering the buzzer. (Getty Images)
This makes sense, but wouldn't it be hilarious if the slug was just a patsy? Like, there were really some bands of roving, ding-dong ditching Bavarian teens, and it was just a coincidence that some mollusk just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and caught the blame.
I mean, is a slug heavy enough to press a button?
Or — GASP! — Could it be that those Bavarian teens have planted that poor slug so it could take the fall for them?
I don't mean to get all tin-foil hatty on this, but I think there may be more to this story…
That or some slug really did just accidentally hit the doorbell a couple of times.