It seems to me that this would have made a good series at Halloween a few weeks ago rather than now.

And you have two ways of looking at this.

One…. if you put out the beer for the gnome, he may think that you are trying to kill the slugs with it (they shrivel up when they drink beer)… and this would be insinuating that the gnome was falling back on his job of irradicating slugs.

Two… Beer makes gnomes happy and they drink it and curl up under a bush. This allows you time to bonk it on the head.