Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Love Before Lunch

Not many x-rated stories begin with the words, "I was out walking the cat," but this one does.

We were walking up the gravel path between our place and the next door neighbours when Sal stopped to sniff what I took to be a bit of rusted metal hanging from the wall.

Whaaaat? I went for a closer look, and discovered that what I had taken for a spiral of rusty steel of unknown origins was actually a pair of "Limax Maximus", or Giant Leopard Slugs, entwined around each other in a spiral.

They were whoppers, about four or five inches in length, and they were quite busily engaged in exchanging genetic information, so that my garden could be blessed with hundreds of gigantic, voracious slugs next season.

They were hanging by a four foot strand of substantial slime but were suspended over a long stretch of sharp, dry gravel. The chances of survival would be slim once they fell on that. So, being the kind-hearted slugatarian that I am, I picked them up by the strand and moved them around to shaded spot in the garden, into a thick stand of spearmint. I'm sure being dropped on their heads ruined the mood, but they should have had the good sense not to make whoopee in such an exposed location.

Should you be in the mood for a bit of slug porn you may watch the following clip narrated by sir David Attenbourough which shows a pair of leopard slugs doing precisely what my slugs were doing this morning, in far less photogenic surroundings.




It's obvious the British Leopard slug is high class and hangs out in posh and mossy English gardens while the BC Leopard slug hangs out in trailer courts and quite possibly smokes cigars and drinks cheap wine out of bottles carried in brown paper bags. Maybe this pair watched the Attenborough, "Leopard Slugs in Love" movie before falling on each other in the throes of passion. Whatever inspired their romance I can't for the life of me figure out how they came to be hanging on the side of my trailer on an August day in the middle of a desert.

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