Slug (came in with the herbs)

[crabocado]

I planted some herbs (chives, parsley) in a rectangular planter box/pot for my wife, and they never did very well. Nevertheless when the weather turned cold I brought them into the kitchen next to a window. In December I started to notice a slug appearing at night, also in the mornings. Personally I'm very fond of terrestrial gastropods, so it's become a sort of pet. It disappears for hours at a time, probably hiding under the rim of the pot. There is a large drainage tray under the pot (also rectangular shaped but actually taller than the pot, which forms a crevice) that holds a pool of water, which must help keep things moist as well. I was gone for 5 days and considered putting him/her/they in a jar, but decided to chance it. Sure enough s/he is still doing fine upon my return. Yesterday s/he crawled over the pot edge and a tiny spider appeared, lunging out aggressively from the crevice; there was a brief tussle and I thought, is it possible the slug got bit? But that seemed very unlikely, since they go for the joints in their insect prey, and a slug doesn't have joints (and is sticky; and, this one is many times larger than the spider). Sure enough, sluggy is back today looking fine.

I have lots of photos although transferring them must wait for a convenient time, as this is an old-school camera (digital, but not a phone). A couple weeks ago I started adding dog food kibble to the soil surface, also slices of apple. Before my trip I also added a few cedar bark mulch chunks to the surface to provide more hiding spaces. It's lots of fun having a pet slug! Today, for the first time, I observed her crawling under the pot rim as I had suspected. It's surprising how much ground sluggy can cover in a short period of time; s/he just seems to kind of appear and disappear unpredictably.

[hermitcrablover2]

Glad that the slug is doing good after a fight with the spider! S/he sounds like a very cute slug! I really want a pet slug or snail, but the best I have now is snails eating my Mom's garden

[crabocado]

Well, Sluggy appeared to be growing longer, and happily consuming the apple, etc. Then a few days ago s/he stopped appearing entirely, so I am fearing s/he maybe reached the end of the lifespan. But I noticed that there are some tiny baby slugs attached to the undersides of the bark mulch that I added. So the colony continues. I wonder what their normal longevity is.

[hermitcrablover2]

Cute! I wonder if they're s/he's baby slugs? Also I was reading a bit about slugs and learned they usually live a year on average, but some live longer

[crabocado]

I know, it seems like more than a coincidence! Hard to say though. The dinky slugs are different sizes, some look truly dinky, like 2 mm long, others are maybe 3-4 mm long. It does seem likely they all hatched out in the past couple months. But it's possible there were slug eggs from other moms/dads, left in the soil that just had to wait a while to hatch.

I've got maybe half a dozen that I can easily see on the soil surface, even in the middle of the day. I guess they're more diurnal than the older slugs. I watch them with my Pentax Papilio binoculars (8.5 x 21). These let you watch from about 1 foot away. I highly recommend them for enjoying the creepy-crawlies.

[crabocado]

Within a couple days, some of the dinky slugs had grown to about a centimeter in length. Now it's not so difficult to just glance down and see them cruising along as I pass by.

An alarming development, though - we have a new pit bull and she is pretty crazy, and sometimes picks up the chunks of bark mulch I had placed on the soil and crunches them to bits, which is a horrifying prospect for any slugs clinging to the underside! I tried to train her against it, but I doubt it did much good. She is pretty wild and when she comes in from the yard she jumps all over me and practically mauls me to death. (Theoretically it's a form of affection.) But she's a sweetheart a lot of the time.

[crabocado]

The slugs are growing - some of them are around 15 mm long. There are still a lot of them - it's easy to count around 30 (most of them hidden under the wood chips), so there must be more. I imagine they may be getting food-limited, so I sprinkle edible stuff like ground flax seed (which I bought for my h-crab) over the soil surface. The dog seems to be leaving them alone - fingers crossed. I haven't told my wife about this - as far as she knows, this is just an obsolete pot of soil taking up space in the kitchen. So every morning when I come down, there's a distinct possibility I'll find either (1) the dog has gobbled everything up or (2) the wife has thrown it out in the freezing cold. Life in Slug City can not be taken for granted!

[hermitcrablover2]

Wow! It must be so cool to watch the slugs grow! My dog tries to eat random stuff a lot too lol

[hermitcrablover2]

How are the baby slugs doing?

[crabocado]

It's a slugfest! Several are over an inch long, when stretched out. Each piece of bark mulch an inch or two across probably has 10-15 slugs crowded like sardines underneath, most of the time. I haven't lifted the mulch up for a while because they're kind of stuck to the soil, and I want to keep it that way to discourage the dog from rooting around. The slugs seem to come in two color morphs, a normal whitish morph and a darker, kind of speckly morph. At night, they're mostly out and about but a few always seem to stay stuck to the underside of the mulch. During the day they're almost all back under the mulch, but there's often one or two slugs out and about, who didn't "get the memo", kind of "insomniacs" or whatever. I'm sure they have personalities, it's just hard to get to know them as individuals since they all look alike (except there are two colors and several sizes).

[hermitcrablover2]

Aw! They sound so so cute! I want to get pet slugs now too! It must be so cool to see them grow up

[crabocado]

Well, this is interesting. They just kept getting bigger, and every night several dozen were cruising about. Every few days I'd sow ground flaxseed, or sometimes put out a little banana or apple, and they gobble it up within a couple days. Then recently most of them disappeared. I thought, did the new dog snarf them up? (She eats everything, from bird seed, to ramen wrappers, horse poop, plastic toys, styrofoam, you name it.) But then I realized, the mulch (bark pieces) are undisturbed. That's a good sign, because she's crazy energetic and would have scattered them all over. So the only possible place the slugs could have gone is over the edge of the pot, and somewhere in the dark crevice between the pot and the drainage tray. I picked it up and there they were - several dozen slugs, packed shoulder to shoulder. Something triggered a mass "migration" to this new location. I guess one day they realized they were just too big to squeeze under the edge of the mulch.

[crabocado]

I forgot to mention the best part. A few days ago, two of the slugs got... romantic. They weren't especially large or mature looking. Just two small slugs that had good "chemistry" together. Each one had an organ, shall we say, poking at the other slug, as they slowly circled and aimed at each other. I know snails use a "dart" to mate, so I was waiting for something like that to happen. I took a bunch of pictures, and it looked pretty dramatic, like a nature documentary, but they never seemed to really "consummate" as far as I could tell. It was just that one time, for maybe half an hour. Amazing to watch.

[myllkti]

This was such a sweet read-through! I cannot emphasize enough how emotionally invested I now am in your accidental slug colony <3<3

[crabocado]

Thanks!! It's great to have a place like this where we can celebrate our shared passion for the creepy-crawlies. I have lots of photos and I'll try and post some in a few days.