May 1998 to September 2006, Washington

By Kristen Elde (photo courtesy of Steven N. Severinghaus)

May 1998, steps from my family’s timeshare in the North Cascades. At the close of my 4th grade year, I’m tromping through the woods with my cousin. Elisabeth is a year ahead of me in school, an expert crafter of friendship bracelets and dangly earrings, and an ardent campaigner for the native banana slug. She stumps for pretty much all low-lying and generally despised creatures, actually.

The Pacific Northwest, as most are aware, is a wet place. Temperatures are mild, too, creating an optimal playing field for the gastropod. This particular day is no exception, and it isn’t long before sweet Elisabeth has picked out – and up – her first pocket-sized playmate. A half-dozen more will follow.

It is the color of pitch. It has a similar luster, though it lacks the smooth continuity of pinesap, with most of its supple body marked by deep pocks and ridges. Not unlike the bark of the trees that enclose us on all sides, minus the corresponding revulsion (mine). (Years later my online research, side effect of which is an upset stomach, will point to the black slug, or black arion, species.)

As it rests in a state of paralysis on the palm of Elisabeth’s 10-year-old hand, its once elongated form puckered into a perfect, glistening dome, I fight the urge to scream, not wanting to look the part of a sissy. I feel my face blaze, my head go light as Elisabeth brings her other hand to the inert animal. She brushes two fingers back and forth along its shiny mantle, indifferent to the mucus that will remain on her skin through dinner.

The slug is now rocking from side to side. Elisabeth dares me to touch it. I whimper. She doesn’t press the issue.

December 1995, the Camano Island home of S.H.S. Varsity Volleyball Captain Tristan Nicholas. Two weeks ago my team was ousted from the district tournament. Nevertheless, spirits are high at our end-of-the-season pizza-and-cake extravaganza, due in part to the fact that the Nicholases have a hot tub.

There are eight of us soaking up the 105-degree liquid paradise, bubble-encased arms emerging periodically in want of a chug of Mountain Dew or a forkful of cake. Thirsty yet lacking the desire to move any more than is necessary, I reach my hand back behind me, leaving my heat-drunk head to rest against the edge of the tub as I feel around in search of the bottle of Aquafina I know to be in the vicinity.

But what’s this? Something … not my water bottle, but kind of nice feeling. Slick, wet, soft. I turn my head, craning my neck for a look. Right away, I see it: thick and glossy, its five-inch-long translucent body curled around itself and illuminated in the yellow glow of the porch light. Its breathing hole gapes at me.

I spring from the bench, yanking my hand back violently. The force sends me reeling, and I lurch toward the center of the crowded Jacuzzi and into the lap of an unsuspecting teammate. My blood burns a million degrees hotter than the jets that surround me, scorching me from within, threatening to melt the skin right off my body. I hear laughter. “Oh geez, what’s the big deal? What’s it gonna do – bite you?”

Reaching me through ringing ears, the chorus of giggling continues. I try hard to swallow the lump lodged in the center of my throat, but it won’t go down, and seconds later my tears get the better of me.

September 2006, a popular recreational trail just north of Seattle. Dad and I are together for a relaxing Sunday morning run. As we ease into a steady clip, chatting intermittently, the shallow Sammamish River gives way to sprawling agricultural fields partially obscured by low-hanging brush, tangles of blackberry stickers, the occasional rambler house. A jagged tree branch strewn across the way draws my gaze downward, and as I heighten my stride to avoid tripping, I spot it.

It’s small. An inch long, max. Skinny, too, with antennae no larger than the tip of a thumbtack. But it’s still one of them, causing a cry to escape my mouth mid-sentence. Dad, startled at my outburst, looks frantically from left to right, presumably under the assumption that whatever the source, it can’t be so insignificant as to slide along drowsily at our feet.

“Slug!” I out between breaths, my stride becoming a bound, anxious as I am to put the abomination far behind me. Dad, while initially taken aback, fast falls into understanding, having been exposed to similar fits throughout my childhood and adolescence. Still, his low chuckle does not go undetected.

He’s still at it when my first cry gives way to a second, more urgent one. “They’re everywhere!”

Scores of baby slugs, the majority lining the trail’s outer edges, plotting my demise. My breathing is ragged as I attempt to divert my attention from the thousands of stalked eyes reaching forth, willing me to collapse atop their oozing little vessels. I tell myself to keep on keeping on, but the appeal is a flimsy one, so unconvinced I am of my pending failure.

And fail I do, narrowing my eyes to slits as I trample haphazardly through brush en route to the relative safety of the sidewalk above. “Oh Kristen, come on!” However reluctant, Dad follows suit, and we remain off-trail for the remainder of the run.

My friends and family have, in the past, extracted considerable amusement from this unrelenting fear of mine. Moving beyond vaguely teasing remarks, dear friend Kristy once evoked a particularly gruesome and explicit vision: me, heaved headfirst into a solid mass of my least-favored mollusks. “Better come out with me tonight, or … VAT OF SLUGS!” Of course, she intended this to be funny, and I always genuinely cracked up at the utterance. My laughter, though, had a nervous edge to it, as I truly could not have fathomed anything more horrific. I still can’t.

These days I don’t worry about potential run-ins. No longer a Seattleite, I live in Brooklyn, where a slug on the sidewalk is about as likely as a dry month in the Emerald City. And while my new home is hardly a pest-free zone, I’ll rub elbows with a cockroach over a slime-leaching gut-bag any day.

Until said roach hisses. Or flies. At which point, all bets are off.

Kristen Elde has published articles in BUST, Health, and Runner’s World. In her dreams, she still runs from slugs.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Friday, March 16th, 2007 | Email This Post

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