Happy Super Slug Halloween

 

Most people who have spent any time at all in the Pacific Northwest will know what the above Halloween costume is costuming.

Known by most as slugs. By some as snails. They come in several sizes and colors, including the version known as a banana slug, due to being yellow.

Slugs are sort of the PNW pest equivalent of cockroaches. I never saw a cockroach til I moved to Texas. I don't think they exist in the Pacific Northwest. 

A couple years ago a friend of mine here, a lifelong Texan, flew up to Washington for the first time. Being surrounded by mountains for the first time in her life impressed her the most. She said she found the mountains mesmerizing.

And then there was this other thing she'd never seen before that she found disturbing.

Slugs.

On her first morning in Seattle she went out to the backyard of the friend's house in which she was staying and saw dozens of giant worm-like things leaving a trail of slime in their wake. She quickly retreated back into the house and alarmingly reported some sort of invasion was taking place in the backyard. The friends rushed outside, saw the invaders, and simultaneously said "slugs".

Slugs can be a big nuisance. I had a rooftop garden at my house in Mount Vernon. I grew strawberries, basil, spinach, blueberries and I forget what else. Somehow slugs managed to get up the stairs and into the various food growing containers.

You can buy slug bait which attracts and kills them, leaving a trail of slime and a slug corpse in its wake. Or you can put beer in a saucer. The beer attracts the slug, which then drowns, happily drunk.

I wonder if I will be getting Halloween costume pictures of David, Theo, Ruby, Spencer Jack and Hank Frank today?

Spencer Jack may have reached that age where he thinks he is too old to go trick or treating...