Feeling Sluggish

  Mark and I love to take hikes about the hillside early in the morning and then again late in the afternoon.  One would think that we would tire of making the same trip twice daily but this is not the case.  Things change in a matter of minutes and there is always something new to see.  Or, perhaps, I manage to see things that I had overlooked on the previous walk.  Still, we are never bored as we meander and it does give us a bit of relaxation after working about the place all day.  

  On one such hike, I found a beautiful slug.  Yep, beautiful.  Well, at least as beautiful as a slug may be.  This one was quite large and spotted.  The morning sun glittered on the back of the usually nocturnal critter.  That same sun would prove to be ruthless to the animal if it did not have the ability to slide under a piece of bark or down in some moist mulch.  This one was choosing to crawl into a vacated woodborer hole.  There it will spend the heat of the day resting.  At dusk, the critter will crawl out and forage for food. 

  This Carolina Mantleslug was doing what slugs normally do.  It was busying itself with the dead wood of an old Bay Tree.  While most folks despise slugs as garden pests, in the woods they can be beneficial in clearing up debris and sometimes attacking other pests (albeit slow-moving pests such as snails.)  As long as these critters reside in the woods and do not eat my tomatoes, I am fine with them.  They have a place in this old world and they have a certain beauty even if that beauty can only be seen by another slug!  Me?  I see all living things in a different way than most folks...slugs included.