Day 343: While this is far from the smallest slug I've ever seen (I had a plague of micro-slugs on a downspout once), it was tiny enough to be cute, and although I suspect it of being our standard Banana Slug (Ariolimax columbianus), I can't be sure. Nor can I make an educated guess based on other slugs I've seen in my yard because...well, because oddly, I have had very few slugs in my yard here, and I'm at a total loss to explain their absence. I mean, this is the Pacific Northwe't. There are slugs everywhere, with the possible exception of my yard. Don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining. I have never had tomato stems severed at ground level, never found slime coating my lettuce. I do not see glistening trails weaving through my flower beds or the alpine strawberries beside my driveway. In fact, my only competition for those tiny, candy-sweet berries are the juncos who roam through the jungle of their leaves picking the ones which aren't quite ripe enough for the human palate. No, I don't have slugs, and even after that slug-plague I mentioned in the first sentence, I saw no full-sized ones that season. Except for that one occurrence, I could count the number of slugs I've found in my yard on the fingers of both hands, and would still have a digit or two free to poke buttons or pick my nose. I hope this one isn't a foretaste of slimier times to come.
365Caws is now in its 14th year of publication, and was originally intended to end after 365 days. It has sometimes been difficult for me to find new material, particularly during the winter months, but now as I enter my own twilight years, I cannot guarantee that I will be able to provide daily posts. It is my hope that along the way I may have inspired someone to a greater curiosity about the natural world. If so, I can rest, content in the knowledge that my work here has been done.
Sunday, September 20, 2020
Mini-Slug
Labels:
mini-slug,
pencil perspective,
yard
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment