Slugs!

This lovely creature is a Leopard Slug (gastropod mollusc). A super slimy hermaphrodite, which has such sticky slime it can cause your fingers to stick together. The Little Ladies don’t seem to mind the slime at all. I have to admit, I didn’t hold the slug….someone had to take the pictures and I couldn’t have slime on my camera now could I?!

This not so shy slug is longer than Fauna’s hand! They can grow in length to 8 inches.

You cannot find them where we live because they are city dwellers; our place is too country for them. My sister toted them over from her workplace to visit the Little Ladies. As you can see, the ladies loved them!

Diagram from Wikipedia

If you look closely, you can see the pneumostome, the hole which the slug breathes; it’s right there by the tip of Fauna’s pinky.

We love watching the four tentacles. It has 2 for sensing light (the upper ones) and 2 for smelling and feeling. If a slug should lose a tentacle, it will grow back.

Fauna has been fascinated with slugs all spring. She even has an “under the mat habitat” which she keeps perfectly damp for her little slug friends to live under. It’s a welcome mat put in our garden under a tree, she waters the mat daily and has quite a colony of slugs, worms and other little critters under there. The moist mat works better than bricks or stones because it stays wet longer.

This pretty little amber slug is the type we usually find in our yard. It is quite a bit smaller than the Leopard, so you can imagine the amazement the ladies felt when they saw the Leopard Slugs.

Mister and Lady Lous would LOVE to have a scumptious Leopard Slug for dinner, but the girls aren’t willing to share the slugs!

***Comment from blogger friend Chris, Wife Soup,

“…..you can apparently keep them away from basil and your other veggies by using strips of copper around the edges of pots and raised beds. They make a 2″ wide copper tape just for this purpose. Perhaps this is a method to keep slug lovers happy and the garden intact.” Thanks for the suggestion Chris. Fauna is very against killing the “pests” of the garden and she gets upset if I post ways of killing……The Japanese Beetle post made her furious!

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