Sunday 26 August 2012

Tiny weenie snail

As a contrast to yesterday's beast of an obese slug, today I offer you a very small and oh so cute snail. Why is it that snails are cute, even the slimy bits, simply because they sport their own mobile home on their backs?

I've always had a soft spot for snails. There was always an abundance of them round and about my Taid's (Grandfather's) cottage where we used to stay in summer holidays as kids. I'm not a supporter of horse racing or any other sports involving animals, but snail racing still seems to be a fairly innocent childhood activity. As long as they're returned safely to the undergrowth afterwards. Maybe the snails don't agree. Anyway, here's today's mini-beast with obligatory 50 pence piece for scale.

    Jon, I got my crocs into shot especially for you! xx






Saturday 25 August 2012

The biggest slug I have ever seen in my life...new world record.


It's been a bumper year for slugs what with the rain, the rain and the additional rain, and today I saw what I do believe to be the biggest slug I have ever seen (in my life so far). 



FYI that is a size 7 croc.

I also tried measuring it but it deliberately went all short and fat. 
The '50p for scale' trick didn't really give the desired effect of scale either, but I think you get the gist. 


I do think that this slug has even surpassed the big black slug referred to in the blog post below.
I reckon it was at least 6 - 7 inches depending on how much squidging it was doing.

THE SLUGS ARE EVOLVING! 

Myspace blogpost from August 2007

The other morning, I looked out of the window and saw, on the lawn, what I later realised was the biggest slug I have ever seen in my life. It was humungous. When I first spotted it, I momentarily thought that it was a piece of hedgehog poo.

I  soon realised that it wasn't hedgehog poo as it was moving. It was also far too large to be hedgehog poo, well, not unless there's a big bruiser of a hedgehog out there that spends its night times denting bull bars on SUVs for fun whilst crossing the road eating kebabs. Otherwise, hedgehog poo of that magnitude would have to be the product of some poor, deflated balloon of a hedgehog that had just done the turd of its life.

I still wasn't entirely sure what the thing was, so I rushed outside to have a closer look. It was definitely a slug. I happened to have a Body Shop emery board in my hand at the time, so I used it to measure the slug. You're probably not aware that Body Shop emery boards are the standard unit of measurement in these parts because we're opposed to Europe. The slug came out at two thirds of the length of a Body Shop emery board, which is about 5 inches or approx 13cm to normal people. I don't really like slugs, but I had to admire this one glistening like liquorice in the morning dew; gliding leisurely through the grass with the ease and grace of a tall ship on a benevolent sea. It was quite serene. I mentioned it to someone later that day and they said, "Did you salt it?" The answer was, "No."

I couldn't bring myself to kill something that had managed to avoid predation long enough to grow to two thirds of the length of a Body Shop emery board. It was magnificent. Even the blackbirds were giving it a wide berth. So, I left it grazing on the lawn like a small, deformed, slippery horse even though it was probably on its way to decimate the hostas.

Here's a poem that I wrote some years ago as you can probably tell by the film star references:

Slug Poem
I'm a slug and I'm all right,
Because I'm an hermaphrodite,
I'm lots of fun, at both ends,
So it doesn't matter if I've got no friends,
But I have!
Coz I'm gorgeous; I'm the slug Raquel Welch,
And all the other slugs' little horny bits
Go wild when I go 'squelch',
Sssccchhhhhlllllooooooo-ar-op,
But please don't pour salt on me
Because I will go 'POP',
Ssshhhhllllloooooo-arrrrr-oooop,
And if you pour salt when I'm with my friends,
We'll end up as a POP group,
At the end of my life's silvery road,
Sodium chloride meets slug,
I implode.

P.S. Did I ever tell you about the time I nearly cooked a slug in a pan of pasta? Maybe some other time then.