Slugs, and the Weight of Analysis

The other day, as I made my way back from the house to the guesthouse, to play around with my craft supplies, I nearly stepped on a booger-colored banana slug. Mixed parts grossed out and relieved at having avoided a slimy smush, I bent down to get him out of the way. I grabbed a piece of palm frond that was dry and dead and decorating our ground, along with much other out-of-control foliage, and started to scoop up the thing. It recoiled a bit and produced some extra irredescent slime. I wiggled the leaf a bit to balance him better, to actually get him aboard it, like a raft. He writhed and curled in his best effort of protection. No armor. No real defense. I used a stick to finally scoop him securely atop the palm leaf. But then- I paused.

Suddenly I was hit with this great moral question: what do I do about this slug? I mean, what do I actually do? My sixth-grade teacher, Mrs. Humphreys, always reminded us the true judge of character is what you do when no one's wataching. And here I was, without a witness, faced with this decision that was potentially life-altering for the slug.

And so I was left to evaluate the situation. The reason I stopped to rearrange him was to get him out of the line of feet traffic- which would inevitably lead to a gooey mess and potentially even a painful fall. But now that I was there, leaning over the slimy form, I realized that he was one of the creatures responsible for the fact that we have four big, beautiful heirloom tomato plants in our yard but- after 2 solid months of summer- have yet to enjoy a fresh-from-our-yard-tomato. This was a pest. An uninvited eater-of-gardens, a nuisance to farmers, a jerk. I considered getting a beer for myself and offering some of it to the slug. But I didn't know if it would make the thing shrivel up and make something like those awful squeaky-whistling sounds I imagine whenever someone talks about putting salt on slugs. Something like the noise someone might make while deflating.

So then I'm becoming kind of reflective, like "what has this slug ever really done to me?" type stuff.

I asked it aloud, "What good do you do?"

I guess you could say it looked at me sleepily.

I guess what it did was sluggishly shrug.

"You help break things down, I suppose." I told it with my voice. A newt scurried along across the bricks. "Decomposing stuff and all that jazz..." I continued, trying to urge it onto a dried piece of palm bark.

"Just- why can't you go somewhere useful- like the woods? Decompose rotting trees?" And I realized the slug was an exile in his own land. And that I had decided that my needs and my nature were more important to me than his. I was pulling rank on this one. I had decided that although I could analyze the compassion and science and evolutionary sense behind it all, when it came down to it I was still just deciding to toss this thing over the fence.

See you later, alligator. Deported! Let someone else deal with you!

I slap a mosquito when it lands anywhere near me. They have hurt me directly. They have caused me anguish and annoyance and harm. And if they have not than thousands of their kind has and the risk of reoffending is too high. Spiders I usually can catch in a glass with something and let them out to wander the outside world at eight-times our speed (from his perch atop those spindly mountaintops!). Ants I don't mess with. Frogs I catch and kiss. Cockroaches corpses? I pay them a confused sort of respect. And I finally sweep up their dried bodies,

and curling antennas,

and throw them with the dust bunnies in the trash.