Leopard Slugs

The Great Grey Slug, or “Leopard Slug,” likes to visit our front door!

My buddy the great grey slug, beautiful creatures that are willing to eat cracked corn!

I love slugs.  I like snails too, with their spiral shells reminiscent of galaxies and concepts much larger than themselves.  But snails are pretty hard for me to find – I only have one snail shell sitting on my bathroom sink in the soap dish – whereas slugs come calling every night.  They love the entrance to our “burrow” (the nickname for our apartment) and lately I’ve discovered that the only animals to eat my corn are the groundhogs and the slugs.  They are gorgeous, with a pattern resembling a leopard, and they’re one of the largest land slugs in the world, introduced from Europe.  Even their eggs are beautiful, like crystal marbles (at least the images on Wikipedia look great).

Even though slugs frustrate gardeners everywhere, for me they fall into the category of “awesome” despite my gardener aspirations.  I’ll be the kind of gardener that loves garden-eating animals, like the hound dog loving the fox.  And it’s helpful that they eat cracked corn when none of the birds since April have touched it.  This explains to me the meaning behind that song I don’t understand, Jimmy cracked corn and I don’t care, because nobody cares about cracked corn except our slugs. It makes me feel good knowing these little cuties get to eat something that won’t bother any gardeners.  When this bag of cracked corn runs out I can go buy birdseed the birds will eat, like black sunflower seeds.