Slugs Do Not Live the Lowliest Life

My apartment complex insists upon watering our small patches of grass twice a day, and subsequently the smaller patch of concrete that is my front doorstep is frequently covered with earthworms, slugs, centipedes, and other invertebrates inspired by the moisture to flee their homes.

I particularly enjoy the slugs. They may not be capable of higher math but I like to believe that they think great thoughts in their own way. They’re steady, determined creatures. They probably think that they move very fast. Maybe they even see my front porch as a new uncharted territory, and that they’re off on a grand adventure. Going where no slug has gone before, and whatnot.

Except, slugs have been here before. A few hours ago I was sitting on this front step of mine, admiring the antennae of a smart green slug. He was left in the dust by the occasional centipede but he didn’t seem to mind, making slow but tireless and happy progress. He seemed quite content, and I enjoyed looking at him. A few hours later he was dead.

I smooshed him. Very much by accident, and I still haven’t recovered. I know he had started on the south-hand side, heading west. I figure after an hour or so he encountered the front door and had to turn north in order to avoid exploring the prickly welcome mat. An hour after that he would have had to turn again, east this time, when he had found his way barred by another door, the door to the storage area, where I keep my cigarettes and lighters.

Cigarettes are the reason I went outside. Cigarettes are the reason I put my feet in front of that door and, in a single, irreversible moment, snuffed out the grand adventure of one slug’s life. In that moment I became an instrument of murder, driven by a petty and irrational love.

Afterwards I sat sadly and watched his poor body, the little antennae no longer probing about curiously but sticking straight up and awkwardly in the air. I did ask myself why I was so upset about one slug’s death. I eat meat. I eat chickens, cows, and pigs. Do I not think that chickens, cows, and pigs also deserve grand adventures? Do I think that perhaps their grand adventures are trumped by my desire to eat them? I lamented that I didn’t have an answer, except that chickens, cows, and pigs do not live on my front doorstep, and that if they did, I would not eat them. Not those particular ones.

There has to be some way to deter the relatives of this slug from venturing out upon my doorstep. Short of putting his dead body on display in an effort to warn the others, I would do pretty much anything. I do not want to smoosh another slug. I do not want to wrap another slug’s body in tissue paper and dispose of him in the garbage. I do want my slugs to continue their grand adventures, and while I admire their willingness to take risks in life I do not feel that they have the perspective necessary for adventuring near sidewalks and doorsteps.

I wish that slugs could recognize that they are vulnerable. They are not protected by external armor or even the stiffness of bones. I wish, at the very least, that they could have their playground, while saving for myself a small, slug-free pathway that I could pass through unencumbered by potential murderous guilt.

Until this dream is realized, I can only watch my feet.