Mini-Slug

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.