slugging it out

Most things here in the tropics come in bonanza sizes.

The cute philodendron on your grandmother's hall table in Dubuque has cousins here in Mexico whose leaves could serve as Lane Bryant caftans. And, of course, there are the jumbo-sized insects auditioning for the next re-make of THEM!

But not everything is big. When guests from out east would visit me in Oregon, I would inevitably take them for a hike in one of our mountain forests. All would be well until we would encounter our first banana slug -- aptly named both for size and color. A high portion of my visitors would retreat to the cozy arms of Starbucks for fear they might encounter some other ghastly wild creature.

Banana slugs were only one variety of slug that punctuated my life in the Pacific Northwest -- or Northwet as a wag friend of mine insists on calling the area. None of them are what I would call petite.

I was not aware that slugs existed in Mexico until I moved into the house with no name. Now and then, I would see something that looked as if I might have been processed through the alimentary canal of a small mammal. Perhaps, an opossum.

But I was wrong. Closer examination revealed it was a rather non-descript slug. It had all of the same operating parts of its brethern shell-less mollusks. But it was tiny compared to the slugs I have known. Maybe the slugs here are small due to our tropical heat -- and the natural tendency of slugs toward desiccation.

Until this week, I had seen only three or four in the house in the past five years. That changed this week with our rains. I counted eleven this morning. Nine were dead. Two were headed in that direction.

Maybe it was mating season. Even though slugs are hermaphroditic, they reproduce sexually. Mendel would be proud that they have chosen to share genes rather than merely cloning themselves.

Whatever the reason, they have come on like a plague, and I assume they will recede in the same way.

And the moral of this essay? I really do not have one.

Other than to share one of those nature moments that brightens my life in Mexico.