Friday, October 23, 2009

It Only Happens When It Rains

During the wet days after that huge rainstorm here is one of the visitors that we sometimes get, no, not the cat, that's just Lucky. The banana slug on the window!
I thought it would be a good time to take some pictures of both sides of a banana slug since it was on a window.

You can see through a lot of him.
Banana slugs are an important part of the redwood forest that I live in. And they don't eat my garden plants so they are OK by me, not like regular garden slugs.

But he looks so solid from this angle. Soon he was gone, back out into the redwood duff where they thrive as detrivores (decomposers). You can see the two pairs of tentacles in this picture, that's what they use to sense the world.

2 comments:

Anne Huskey-Lockard said...

WOW!!! What wonderful pics of one! I had heard of them but not seen them.
When my folks were in Italy, they have slugs that were red-orange, of the same size. I can't remember the story that went with the description.....I think as a child I was mesmerized by the thought of a giant red-orange slug!
Kids....ya know!

XXOO!!
Anne

jovaliquilts said...

Very cool! I remember the first time I saw one of these, I could hardly believe they were real. Aren't they the mascot for UC Santa Cruz?