If you’ve got a weak stomach, you can stop reading right now.
Personally, I am not the squeamish sort. My father was a biologist and taught me how to pick up snakes and catch lizards. He taught me how to clean fish, basic taxidermy, and dragged me along to assist on his dead whale autopsies. I kill my own spiders.
But this week, the fall rains returned to Oregon, and I kid you not, they have the biggest, ugliest slugs I’ve ever seen here. I grew up in California, where they actually have a ‘state mollusk’ and believe it or not is a large yellow creature known as a banana slug. They’re yellow. They’re happy. What’s not to love?
The creature crawling across my back lawn this morning is another thing entirely. About the size and shape as a Sharpie pen (see photo). Given my tough-girl upbringing, I decided the best thing to do was to fling it over the fence into my neighbors yard.
Big mistake.
It slurped onto my bare fingers with a vengeance. It slimed me so bad I felt oogie.
It refused to fling.
I finally used the Sharpie pen to scrape it off my fingers into the neighboring yard, but it actually made a thump when it hit their driveway.
I washed my hands (more than twice) and threw away the Sharpie, but I still have that oogie feeling. I can still feel it sucking at my fingers. Ugh.
Lesson learned: Use tongs when flinging slugs lest you get any on you.
Slug Karma is sticky. Don’t mess with it.
