I stared at him, blind hatred burning my eyes. Behind him (I thought it was a him) were the ragged remnants of my previously vibrant tomato plant, now obviously dead. It was plain, he murdered my plant. And I wanted revenge. I took my normal action for this situation. I coldly stabbed him. And threw him to the birds. It was over… until the next nameless killer comes my way.
Of course, he had a name, the same name as all the others of his ilk. “Slug.” Just “Slug.” Now you know what I’m talking about and share my pain…
Therapists recommend facing your issues, slugs are one of my issues and I had a blog posting due. Put this all together and what do you get? Yep, a posting about slugs!
What is a “slug?” If we’re talking nature here, and we are, many people think a slug is a snail without a shell. And that’s pretty much correct. While both slugs and snails are “gastropod mollusks,” the snail has a coiled outside shell for protection. The slug’s shell, if it has any at all, is generally inside its body, although one slug family has a partial shell on the outside.
Just what is a “gastropod mollusk?” Well, a mollusk is an animal without a backbone having a soft one-part body living in an aquatic or moist environment. And a “gastropod” has one large muscular foot allowing it to slowly creep. As it moves it leaves a trail of slime or mucus. You could say they’re a “stomach on one foot.” Putting these descriptive words together, and you have snails and slugs. And yes, there are snails and slugs in the ocean as well as in your garden!
Slugs can live anywhere there is food and moisture. Since nearly any vegetable or flower plant is edible by slugs and the Pacific Northwest is usually damp, we have a lot of slugs here including the famed, and exceptionally large, banana slug. Did you know, nearly 95% of the slugs within an area hide in the soil? And a slug can eat many times its own body weight in one night? They do… which means several slugs can destroy a vegetable or flower bed in a brief time. If more are underground, gardeners must be vigilant.
Slugs aren’t picky about what they eat. Some of what they eat helps your garden including dead animals, decomposing plant matter and feces. Some slugs eat other slugs! They also eat flowers, leaves, fungi, pet food, seedlings, vegetables, fruits, even paper and cardboard. On a good note, slugs are part of the natural food chain and are food for a variety of animals. Their mucus is an effective protection. Besides its numbing anesthetic properties, the mucus causes drooling and vomiting in many would-be predators. (I will not describe what happened when my puppy tried to eat a slug. It was gross!) However, some mammals such as raccoons and opossums, snakes, toads, turtles, ground beetles, and birds such as ducks do eat slugs. Thrushes find them especially tasty.
Remember I said I thought my slug was a male? In truth, slugs aren’t male OR female, they’re hermaphroditic, meaning they’re both sexes. They have both male and female reproductive organs. Two slugs get together and mate to fertilize the eggs of the other. Later, they lay their eggs in a moist sheltered spot, preferring raked or hoed soil. The eggs don’t hatch until the conditions are perfect which can be several years later. Then, they hatch with appetites and a set of “teeth.”
A slug’s body has three main parts: 1) the tail which can be rounded on top or have a more sharply defined edge or “keel”, 2) the mantle with a breathing pore or “pneumostome,” and 3) the head. At the front of the head are two sets of tentacles. The large set has eyes and olfactory organs for smell, at the ends. The smaller set, bracketing the mouth, are feelers and taste buds. Inside the mouth is a “radula” like a tongue but with rough points like teeth to chew the leaves and other debris as food. They can have up to 27,000 of these “teeth.” And, like most invertebrates, slug blood is GREEN!
There are four families of slugs distinguished by the presence/absence of a shell, the absence or type and shape of keel, and location of the breathing pore on the mantle. Color is not necessarily a determining factor. The pictured slug, commonly called the European red slug, is a member of the Arionidae family and has the breathing pore in the mantle’s front half. Members of this family can be yellow, red, orange, black or shades of brown. Their sizes range from one-half to 5 ½ inches long and they live from 1-5 years (unless found by predators or gardeners).
So that’s the story about slugs. And to be totally honest, my attitude towards these interesting but destructive, creatures hasn’t changed very much. The next one I find eating my plants will wish he/she hadn’t…
© Jacqui Austin, September 2020