SLUGS

Request service now online Or call now for free phone quote360 695-BUGS 503 289-0576 360 695-2847

TECHNICAL INFO:

KINGDOM: Animalia

PHYLUM: Mollusca

CLASS: Gastropoda

SUBCLASS: Pulmonata

ORDER: Stylommatophora

SUBORDER: Sigmurethra

FAMILIES: Testacellidae, Urocyclidae, Parmacellidae, Milacidae, LimacidAe, Trigonochlamydidae, Boettgeritlidae, Arionidae, Philomycidae

HOW BIG? : One-half inch (13 mm) to ten inches (25.4 cm), depending on species.

HOW LONG DO THEY LIVE?: One to six years, depending on species.

WHAT DO THEY EAT?: Whatever the forest and field have to offer: fungi, lichens, green plants, worms, centipedes, certain insects, animal feces, carrion, other slugs.

WHAT EATS THEM?: Small mammals, snakes, amphibians, some birds, carnivorous beetles, other slugs, and humans.

HOW DO THEY SPREAD?: Eggs; usually small, less than 1/4, inch (6 mm) in diameter, often with a thick outer shell of calcium carbonate; laid in clutches of 3 to 50, with some species laying as many as 500 eggs per year.

The Connoisseurs of Slugs

When I was a connoisseurs of slugs I would part the ivy leaves, and look for the naked jelly of those gold bodies, translucent strangers glistening along the stones, slowly, their gelatinous bodies at my mercy. Made mostly of water, they would shrivel to nothing if they were sprinkled with salt, but I was not interested in that. What I liked was to draw aside the ivy, breathe the odor of the wall, and stand there in silence until the slug forgot I was there and sent its antennas up out of its head, the glimmering umber horns rising like telescopes, until finally the sensitive knobs would pop out the ends, delicate and intimate....the slow elegant being coming out of hiding and gleaming in the dark air, eager and so trusting you could weep.

-Excerpted from Sharon Olds, The Dead and the Living

Got Spiders