Today in the morning I went to my greenhouse to plant some tomatoes and I was greeted by something I had never seen before – a slug hanging from the ceiling on a thread something looking very much like spider silk. It was not easy to snap a picture with my phone but I managed to get the bugger into focus twice and the thread is visible if you look closely. I do not know if it was bitten by a radioactive spider or somesuch. I suspect more that it was a freak accident where the slug fell from the ceiling and the humidity and temperature were just right for it to remain hanging on a thread of desiccated slug slime.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
The slug did not survive its attempt at an aerial assault on my tomatoes. No slug that gets caught within the greenhouse survives long enough to tell the tale I am afraid, and neither do many that I encounter in the garden. I do not like killing living creatures but I am not working my ass off so slugs can have a feast and I learned a long time ago that one can be on the side of either the slugs or the veggies, but not both.
Pretty clever for a mollusk. Apparently some species can rappel out of trees and off the ceiling using their slime. I don’t think anyone needs to feel guilty about attempting to eradicate them from their gardens. It’s never going to eradicate them, and otherwise they will gobble all your plants.
It’s an unusual but known method that slugs use to get about. It’s also used during mating in some species.
I’m with you. I have a huge garden where they can eat their heart’s desire, but no, they have to assault the 50 square metres of veggies and flowers
The Great Slug of Europe (what we call it in the pacific northwest, doubt the Europeans call it that) uses those mucus strings for mating -- actually worth watching. Two slugs hang down on intertwined mucus strings, stretch out full length head down, intertwine their bodies, both extrude their sex organ through their breathing pores, intertwine them and flair out the bottom ends, and then the organs pulsate for a while. Wish I could have sex like that.
I did not know that these fuckers can make SA paratrooper drops behind enemy lines but it is interesting.
The Arion lusitanicus is called “The Spanish Slug” in most of Europe and it is a pest that can totally devastate crops. Given that this winter had very little frost, I fear a big infestation. Although I do hope that the late frost that killed some of my bonsai and damaged all of my walnut trees killed some of these fuckers too.