Slugging It Out

A similar version was published in the Virginia Magazine, April 24, 1983. Steve McCracken, a Virginian-Pilot illustrator provided the artwork.


We're always hearing about some animal exhibiting some kind human characteristic or trait. Monkeys can be taught to paint like man, parrots can be taught to sing, dolphins can jump through hoops to earn a fish better than any worker ever dreamed of doing, and snakes can slither like a man—oh wait—that one goes the other way around.

Anyway, when it comes to seeking shelter from the rain, the most manlike of all the animals is the slug.

Slugs are those things found under garbage cans and in flower gardens. Because we tend to see slugs only when it is raining or right after a rain, there is a tendency to think slugs like the rain. This is what I always thought and said as much back in 1958 to my buddy Joe.







“Them slugs, Joe, sure do like the rain, don’t they?”


Well, I was wrong—dead wrong. Slugs hate water and why shouldn’t they? To put it very simply, slugs ain’t dressed for rain. A slug in a rainstorm without a shell is like a dong on a fire truck without a bell.

Many years ago I bought a house in Virginia Beach. It was a very nice house—plenty of room, plenty of lawn, plenty of trees and, as I discovered after a very hard rainstorm, plenty of slugs. One morning, as I stood by the front door putting my shoes on I noticed (felt) something.

As early as I had gotten up, I was not the first one in my shoes that morning. A slug had snuggled in and claimed squatter’s rights where my big toe would have gone. As I jumped back, I noticed another slug had taken up residence on the lip of my sole. It was like the Boll Weevil song. The whole damn family was moving in. Two or three more were on the carpet, each having left the familiar silvery trail—the inability to cover one’s tracks being, perhaps, another human characteristic of slugs.

In time I was able to maneuver the slimy little bastards out of my shoes with the help of a long stick, shivering each time I had to pick one up and toss it out the door. When I was finished I tossed the shoes out the door, too. Slugs do that to me.

A few more heavy rains convinced me that slugs do not like water and believe me, I’m okay with that. My only problem was how to induce them to seek shelter somewhere else. My mother didn’t raise her son to run a shelter for homeless gastropods.

Someone told me slugs hate beer so I poured beer on the steps but then I realized I liked beer and throwing good beer at slothful slugs only caused me to resent them more.

One time I went out in the rain with another long pointy stick and kept turning them around like a nomadic sheepherder, routing them away from my front door, but alas, I had to sleep eventually as all good shepherds do and when I did, they beat the same old silvery path to my door.

The front door was solid; no cracks, no spaces—at least none that I could see. I was convinced there was no limit to how thin a slug could get or how low a slug could stoop to gain shelter from the rain, which the weathermen were now calling for more of. Already the slugs were climbing my stairs and beating a path to my door as if the welcome mat read, “SLUGS, ENTER HERE.”

Something had to be done but what?

Ironically, the answer came to me on clear sunny day as I drove past the Ace Construction Company. A big sign hung over the door: “Patios, sidewalks, septic tanks, steps.”

Hmmm! STEPS?

All around the building, scattered about the grounds were steps that led nowhere. Preformed concrete steps waiting to be sold, each one was the same—one-step, two-step, three step, drop.

If I couldn’t drive the slugs away, I thought, at least I could drive them crazy.

Back at my house I got a neighbor to help me set the steps at the end of the sidewalk as a light drizzle began to fall before finally turning into another torrential downpour. I looked in on them throughout the night from the window.

The slugs were slowly inching their way up the first step, then the second, and finally the third where they would then drag their slimy bodies toward where they were confident the door would be, only to be introduced to another human concept—sky diving. They were tumbling over the edge like barrels over Niagara.

It rained all night—a hard, driving rain but I slept like a baby—a baby filled both with contentment and excitement—and at first light I raced down the stairs and out the door.

Caesar at the Rubicon couldn’t have been prouder.

The path of the slugs’ defeat was clearly marked. I followed the silver tracks with delight—up the stairs, down the drop, a few scattered circles (I assume to gather their wits), and then a path toward my neighbor’s house. I had beaten them, broken their will. They had surrendered and my home was again my castle.

That afternoon, I helped my neighbor carry the steps to the end of his walk.