Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Slug Salad Anyone?

It's been raining the past couple days and for S. Cal residents that means an uprooting of slime creatures from deep beneath the earth. Earth worms, snails, slugs, pupae, all sorts of slime bombs pepper our lawn and patio. It also means that when we let Wrigley out to do his business, he sometimes returns with one of these suckers latched onto his fur! After a few google searches, this is what this morning's creature looked like...

Here's a close up of the head....

So I dug a little deeper and wanted to find out safe ways to eradicate these pests. One picture on a website I found, left me thoroughly amused so I had to share it on here.

This is a picture of a slug found in parts of Mexico and Florida....

And here is a diagram of the slug's working parts....

Yes, the anal flap and the genital pore caused me to chuckle but what I found most amusing was the scientific name for this slug...

"Vaginula plebeia". Coincidence??? I doubt it. I'm guessing a man came up with this one.

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