I like slugs. In fact, I like any kind of animal that has eyes on stalks.
Now, I've always known that our tiny back garden has been a bit of a haven for slugs. I don't directly encourage them, but I do absolutely nothing to discourage them, as they've never eaten anything important (usually Porkie would get to those first!). This evening, though, we removed Porkie's hut from her half of the garden, only to find the underside had become home to what must have been a hundred slugs. Gam wants to plant things in Porkie's part of the garden (which she, due to her never ending ravenousness, ensured remained a veritable desert), but he humoured my wish to give the slugs a proper chance to leave. We upended the cage and I thoroughly watered the garden to make it more hospitable for slugs to travel through in search of a new home, and we're leaving it there overnight. I also watered the board they were on to wake them up and wash them off, but then I decided to take some photos of the ones that were left- I've never seen this many slugs together at once. To be honest, I felt a bit like the Spencer Tunick of the slug world (yeah, that can go on my resumé!).
Enjoy:
8 comments:
(throws up in new hat)
Hello,
Well you had a real slug fest going on. You were no slug-a-bed.
Having been in a few Spencer Tunick installations I must confess there are some disturbing similarities. My wife says some of the models in the installations look a bit more like pigs, which is not really much more flattering. To be authentic as "Spencer" you must stand over them on a ladder and give directions through a megaphone. Don't worry if the slugs don't understand the directions. Not many of us understand Spencer's the first time around.
Roger
Gee, squeamish, aren't we? :P
I think they're really cute- I was only sorry that more of them didn't put their eye-stalks right out and start racing around.
As for Spencer Tunick photos, all the humans in Spencer Tunick photographs look like a herd of pigs, really. It's only when you get close up that they actually start to look human. I guess the slugs don't really look like pigs or humans, but they are rotund and chubby.
We have leopard slugs in our garden, and they are a real plague and they try to destroy our baby plants, and they're not native. However, I saw them on one of those insect documentaries mating, and they really do look cool when they're doing that (google them and you'll see pictures). They're kind of huge too, when I first found one I brought it inside and took lots of photos of it. But I'm not so friendly feeling towards the slugs as you are, even if they are cute. I can't help but think of the horrible diseases babies and stuff can catch from them if they accidently eat them (or when teenagers eat them for a dare and end up with eosinophilic meningitis - I can send you the journal article if you like)
Ooh yes please to the journal article- it sounds really interesting!
hope you got the email
disgusting... yet awesome
Got the email, thanks :)
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