Dear Sir:
A friend of mine rescues spiders. Other than crawl on the ceiling or surprise you, what harm do they do? They certainly get rid of other obnoxious garden creatures, even if they look spooky.
So I began to notice worms, who do little but loosen your soil and stir up many good things in it. So on my walks, I began to notice that worms were falling off a cement wall, rolling in the gravel, and slowly dying. Their only escape was traffic on the highway. So I took along a small tool I thought would make them curl up, and allow me to lift them gently with my fingers. Once grasping them, I returned them to their natural home in the grass. It was my way of saving some small part of the world.
Then I discovered another creature, with lovely yellow and black colours and took a photo of it. A simple yellow slug. It’s too bad slugs aren’t given a more majestic name, because even the word conjures up something ugly. Mind you, you can put half an emptied grapefruit propped up on a rock that will attract them away from your lettuce.
After that, I found an out-of-the-way hill, off the beaten path, where I was sure slugs would abound. Sure enough I found a brown one right away. All I could remember is that slugs have one foot, and obviously need a crutch.
I have books on butterflies, the night sky, animal tracks, minerals, birds, rocks, and trees, and not one book on slugs. (I had also decided to quit fishing because 30 per cent of the world’s fish are gone. Well, maybe one fish wouldn’t hurt).
Then, I happened to read British Columbia’s summer magazine. It seems that a biologist made one of those discoveries in Pemberton – a sharp tailed, reddish, and pencil thin snake – that is so rare that it has never been confirmed on mainland B. C. And guess what it eats? You guessed it – it has a thorn-like spike at the end of its tail for wrestling its primary prey: slugs.
Wow, what a discovery! Goodbye slugs a hundred years from now!
So much for grapefruit. Never cared much for them anyway. And, just in case you didn’t know, snails are neither male nor female – they are both. And once they get their feet matched, they go underground and lay between 125 and 50 round, white, pearl eggs.
If you need some sharp-tailed snakes, order them from Pemberton and you might get lucky 20 years from now. In the meantime, snails continue to proliferate – even in the sea, where they are likely to be poisonous. On land my favourite one is the Haitian tree snail with its many coloured, rainbow stripes.
Sylvia E. Johnson,
Terrace, BC
