The Slug Stalker

By C. Duane Hague

“What’s she doing?” Jerry Ramsey asked as he peered through a crack in the six-foot privacy fence that bordered Mark Norbert’s back yard.

A tall, thin boy, Jerry wore glasses and did well in school. He liked to play basketball and was proud to be in the starting lineup as center on his school’s team.

“She’s salting slugs again. She hates slugs more than anything,” Mark replied.

He had a better vantage point, a nice big knothole to see through. In contrast to Jerry, Mark was built like a dump truck. His favorite sports were baseball and football, both of which he played well, resulting in exalted positions on his teams. Mark was a full four months and some change older than his friend, just shy of his 13th birthday.

***

Ten minutes earlier, Jerry had blasted into Mark’s back yard as usual, skidding to a stop on the dew-laden grass; his knobby-tired mountain bike leaving a long skid mark as he did so.

And, as usual, Mark had admonished, “If my mom catches you doing that, she’ll put your lights out ... big time!”

Fortunately for Jerry, Mark’s parents slept in on Saturdays and were not up to witness Jerry’s recklessness.

Ruffling the slicked-down grass with the edges of their shoes, the grass was made to stand up again, at least partially.

The main reason Jerry spent so much time at Mark’s house was because of the trampoline. When he’d first found out that his friend had one, he’d simply said, “Cool.” But from then on, every chance he got, he’d show up at Mark’s, primed for feats of athletic prowess.

***

As the boys watched, Mrs. Telford turned from her task and started toward the fence.

“I know you’re over there, Mark,” Mrs. Telford said as she approached. “Why don’t you and your little friend come on over in a bit and have some fresh baked cookies and milk with me?”

Embarrassed to have been caught spying, Mark consented, “Okay, Mrs. Telford.” He didn’t sound particularly enthusiastic. “How long?”

“About an hour or so,” she said. “Going in to mix up the dough right now.” Her voice grew fainter as she turned and moved away from the fence. Then she added, “Got me a good crop of slugs this morning!”

To Jerry, Mrs. Telford was a little bit scary. Word on the street had it that she might be crazy, maybe even a witch. She was old - more than old, ancient. Her hair was always bound into a tight bun with wisps of white hair straying from its confinement. Being an ample woman, she tended to waddle some as she moved. A crop of moles, some with hair growing from them, gave yet more credence to the witch idea.

Jerry couldn’t remember ever seeing her clothed in anything but that faded pink bathrobe. Today she wore a heavy jacket decorated with a Nike swoosh over the robe to ward off the early morning April chill. On her feet were top-of-the-line Nike’s. Her daughter, who came almost daily, worked for Nike and qualified for substantial discounts on her employer’s products.

Mark had told Jerry that Mrs. Telford’s husband died years ago and that she lived alone. Alone, except for the cats - 37 at last count.

“That’s a lot of cats,” Jerry had surmised with a snort of disbelief.

“It’s true,” Mark had defended. “I counted them myself just last week.”

“How could you count all those cats? It’s not like they line up or anything. They’re all over the place.”

“I could be off a little,” Mark admitted. “Well, anyways, she told me 37. She even knows them all by name. Her favorite is Meowy, then there’s Ceeatee and Shadow. I think another one is named Midnight. That’s about all I can remember. Don’t know how she keeps them all straight!”

“How come she doesn’t put out slug poison? Wouldn’t that be a lot easier than pouring salt on them?” Jerry asked.

Returning to his post at the fence, he watched as Mrs. Telford headed toward the patio. Pausing, she flicked open the spout on the salt container she carried and stooping, poured a mound onto the ground. The familiar picture of a girl with an umbrella decorated the dark blue container. Wielding the salt like a weapon, she moved off a few steps and repeated the act before stepping onto the patio and disappearing into the house.

“I asked her that once. She said that she was afraid one of her cats might eat the poison and get sick.”

“Oh,” Jerry replied.

Abandoning his post at the fence, Mark jogged over to the trampoline with Jerry close behind. With practiced ease, Mark leapt up and began bouncing. Higher and higher he went, until he disturbed an overhanging cherry tree branch, which discharged a small blizzard of blossom petals. The blossoms whirled and danced on the trampoline’s stretchy surface as he continued bouncing.

“Come on, Jerry. We can do doubles,” Mark invited, stopping briefly so Jerry could get on.

Laughing, Jerry tried to coordinate his bounces with Mark’s. Finally, catching the rhythm, they propelled themselves higher and higher, the trampoline’s elastic membrane nearly punching the ground. By the time they got out of sync and tumbled laughing onto their backs, the overhanging cherry tree branch was stripped of its blossoms, hanging starkly naked against the clean cobalt blue of the April sky.

Stretching out on the trampoline, hands clasped behind their heads, the two boys rested in companionable silence. Jerry watched as a fluffy white cloud drifted by, partially obscured by the dense mass of cherry blossoms that crowded the sky between.

“You ever been in her house?” Jerry asked. He was referring to Mrs. Telford.

“Oh, sure. Lots of times. When I was little, I used to stay with her after school till Mom or Dad got home.”

“What’s it like? ... I mean, with all those cats?”

“Mostly what I remember is the smell. I don’t think anything smells as bad as cat poop. Everywhere you looked there were cats. There was one that was real weird. Its eyes were huge and looked like they were made out of plastic or something. There were even cats in the cupboards and all over the kitchen counters. If you wanted to sit down someplace, you had to move a cat. It was really something all right. And the cat hair! You wouldn’t believe it! There was cat hair everywhere! I remember one time at Christmas, she brought over some cookies that she’d made. When I took a bite out of one, I got a big hairball in my mouth. I gagged and almost puked. I’ve never eaten any of her cookies since.”

“Oh, yuck! That’d be enough to gag a maggot! I can see now why you didn’t sound very excited about going over there.”

“Yeah, you got that right,” Mark said. Then, with a soft chuckle, “I took those hairy cookies to school after New Year’s and gave them to Fat Pat. She wolfed them down like nobody’s business.”

The image of Patricia scarfing down those cat hair-laced cookies was too much for Jerry. He exploded with laughter and rolled around on the trampoline. Between gasps for air, he said, “I bet her poop looked like it was growing hair.” With that thought, Mark cracked up, too.

“That kind of backfired on me though. Fat Pat thinks I like her because I gave her those cookies. I can’t tell her the real reason I gave them to her.”

“Yeah, that’d be kind of cruel,” Jerry agreed with a malicious grin.

Bouncing to his feet and jumping down from the trampoline, Mark said, “Let’s go see how many slugs she salted.”

Slipping through the gate into her back yard, Mark led the way over to Mrs. Telford’s garden plot.

“Oh, wow!” Jerry exclaimed. “Look at all the little piles of salt!”

Besides the mounds of salt, the garden patch was crisscrossed with silvery slug trails.

“Those slugs must have been in a feeding frenzy last night,” Mark said. 

Picking up a stick, he nudged one of the larger hills of salt, flipping a monster slug onto its side. It looked quite dead.

“Wonder what it would feel like to get salted to death,” Jerry said, snickering.

“I think I read somewhere, or maybe saw on TV, that slugs don’t have much of a nervous system. So maybe they don’t feel anything.”

“Yeah, you might be right,” Jerry responded. “I barbecued one on our Weber one time. It didn’t seem to react much, just sort of curled up and bubbled before turning black.”

“Oh! That’s gross! When did you do that?”

“Long time ago, when I was little. I remember how mad Mom was when she came out of the house with the meat. She wasn’t very happy to find a barbecued slug on her grill.”

The memory flash elicited a laugh, which infected Mark as well.

“Let’s go in the house and get a bowl of cereal. All this talk of barbecuing slugs has made me hungry.” This last was said with a teasing grin on Mark’s face.

“Whatcha got?”

“I know we got Cheerios. Maybe some Fruit Loops and Corn Flakes. We can have toast with it.”

“Sounds good,” said Jerry. “What about your Mom and Dad?”

“They sleep late on weekends. I’m sure we won’t bother them,” Mark said, ushering Jerry back through Mrs. Telford’s gate.

With their hands full of buttered toast and bowls of heavily sugared Cheerios and milk -there wasn’t any Fruit Loops - they let themselves out through the patio door and sat down at the picnic table. For several minutes all you could hear was the crunching of cereal and the twittering of birds as they foraged for nest-building material. A squirrel bolted along the top of Mrs. Telford’s fence, with a cat in hot pursuit.

Picking up his bowl, Mark drank the remaining sugar-sweetened milk and then popped the last bite of toast into his mouth.

“You know what might be fun?” he asked, snickering.

“What’s that?” Jerry said, raising his bowl to his mouth and slugging down the remaining milk, swallowing a few Cheerios whole as he did so.

“Knowing how much Mrs. Telford hates slugs, it might be fun to make her think we’ve got pet slugs.”

“How we gonna do that?” Jerry retorted.

A long silence ensued as Mark was obviously lost in thought. “Remember that old movie with the rock biter in it and that giant racing snail?

“Yeah, I remember. I think we got that movie, ‘The Never Ending Story.’ ”

“Yeah, that’s the one. Anyway, maybe we could get a couple of slugs and pretend they were racing slugs, like the snail in that movie.”

“Aw ...come on. You got to be kidding me,” Jerry moaned.

“No, wait. Here’s what we do ...”

Five minutes later, Mark stepped back out onto the patio and dumped an armful of stuff onto the table. There was a shoe box with a lid, a roll of aluminum foil, paper towels, a spray bottle full of water and a pair of scissors.

While Mark foraged for stuff in the house, Jerry took the opportunity to do a little solo time on the trampoline. With one last bounce, he jumped to the ground and hurried over.

Mark was already busy cutting aluminum foil.

“Why don’t you go get a couple handfuls of long grass,” he said. “There’s plenty along the fence. Get it by the roots so we’ll have some dirt with it.”

“Okay. Can I use this plastic bucket?” Jerry asked, fishing it out from beneath the table.

“Sure. Go ahead.”

Jerry returned with the grass and dirt just as Mark finished lining the inside of the shoe box with foil. Mark pleated it neatly into the corners and covered about an inch or so up the box’s sides. Jerry watched with interest as Mark began layering paper towels on top of the foil, building up a thick bed inside the box. Then, opening up the scissors all the way and using one of the sharp points of the blades, he began stabbing the sides of the box.

“Air holes,” Mark explained. “There, that should be enough.”

Laying the scissors aside, he picked up the water bottle and began spritzing water over the bed of paper towels. When they were thoroughly soaked, he put in a layer of grass and dirt. “Okay, let’s go find us a couple of prize-winning slugs.”

Grabbing the shovel from the garden shed, Mark headed over to the opposite corner of the yard where an impressive mound of grass clippings resided, several years’ worth. Wedging the shovel blade under the edge of the small mountain, he lifted a section of solid compost from the ground. A wonderful selection of creepy crawly things was exposed. Best of all, two giant slugs curled around each other, both nearly the same size as near as Jerry could tell.

“Hand me that board,” Mark ordered, reaching out with one hand while he supported the shovel with the other.

Seeing what Mark intended to do, Jerry grabbed the board and used it to scrape the slugs out from under the rotting grass.

“Thanks,” Mark said, as he picked up the mating slugs with the shovel. The slugs remained stuck to each other as he dumped them into the shoe box.

“Well, we got our slugs. Now what?” Jerry queried.

“If these are to be racing slugs, we need a race track,” Mark said thoughtfully.

Back to the picnic table they went.

“Be right back,” Mark said, slipping through the patio door again.

A minute later he returned with a ruler, a black felt tip pen and a tape dispenser. Taking the lid off the box, Mark turned it inside up and marked one-inch increments along both long edges. Snipping the corners of the lid so it laid flat, he used the ruler to draw straight lines between the marks. Then he taped the corners back together.

“Okay, let’s see how fast these puppies can move. See if they really are racing slugs,” Mark said. “Put them on the starting line.”

“Are you kidding? I’m not going to pick those slimy things up.”

“Here, we can use these,” Mark said, lifting the lid off the Weber barbecue kettle and producing a pair of tongs.

Gently, Mark captured the slugs and placed them each on the starting line, then punched up the stop watch mode on his Timex.

“Okay, let her rip!” he said, starting the watch.

“This isn’t working,” Jerry complained. “They don’t go straight.”

The slugs had gravitated toward each other, ignoring the sport of the race. Their silver slime trails hadn’t even crossed two of the lines.

“I know …,” said Mark. Taking the ruler, Mark placed it on edge between the amorous slugs and taped it in place. “That should keep them apart.”

Using the tongs again, he put them back on the starting line and restarted the stop watch.

After watching for a couple of minutes, Jerry said, “At least this is more exciting than watching paint dry.”

“Yeah, don’t think they’d get hurt too bad in a collision, that’s for sure,” Mark said with a snort of laughter. Looking at his watch, he proclaimed, “Almost two-and-a-half inches per minute.” Cupping his hands around his mouth, Mark imitated crowd noises. “And it’s Slimy Pete by an eye stalk!”

The race was interrupted by Mrs. Telford. “Hey, boys! You over there?”

Mark jumped as though he’d been goosed. “Yeah, Mrs. Telford, we’re here.”

“The cookies are done. Come on over.”

“Okay. We’ll just be a minute.”

Placing the slugs back inside the box along with the tongs, Mark spritzed them real good with the spray bottle, then put the lid back on.

Coming through the gate and carefully closing it behind them, Mark called out, “Hi, Mrs. Telford. We got something to show you!”

Marching over to her patio, Mark placed the box on the round table. She had one of those kinds with cushioned chairs and a big umbrella.

“What you got there, boys?” Mrs. Telford asked as she set a tall glass of milk at each place and sat down. A cat barely escaped being crushed under her considerable backside. It complained loudly as it sped away. Mrs. Telford was wheezing and sweat beaded her forehead.

A black and white cat came from nowhere, hopped onto the table, then dropped onto Mrs. Telford’s lap. As she absently stroked it, the purr was so loud it almost sounded like a lawn mower had started up next door.

Mrs. Telford, evidently having temporarily forgotten about the shoe box, said, “Go ahead, boys, dig in.”

The warm chocolate chip cookies smelled wonderful, purging whatever reluctance Mark had to eating them. Selecting a cookie from the platter, he took a tiny bite, then examined it suspiciously. Jerry did the same. Seeing no sign of cat hair, Mark took a second bite, this one more generous. They were mouth-wateringly delicious. Seconds later, both Mark and Jerry were wolfing down cookies and slurping milk ravenously. That bowl of cereal had done little to appease their appetites.

By way of conversation, Mark asked, “How many slugs you get today?”

Mark’s voice was naturally loud and strong. Because it was, he didn’t have to repeat himself often for Mrs. Telford’s reduced hearing capability.

“Oh, I think a dozen or so. I used up almost a whole container of salt.” Then, recalling her earlier question, said, “Well, when you going to show me what you got in that box?”

In answer to her question, Mark stood and removed the box lid and turned it inside up on the table. Extracting the barbecue tongs from within, he fished the slugs out and placed them neatly on the box lid. They glistened satisfactorily with slime, as they should.

“Ta-da,” Mark sang dramatically, barely able to keep a straight face. “Presenting our new pets - racing slugs!”

With a shriek, Mrs. Telford jumped to her feet; the movement so quick that the dumped cat yowled loudly and took off like a shot. Both Mark and Jerry were sent into paroxysms of laughter, not only from Mrs. Telford’s reaction, but the way in which the traumatized cat had leapt straight up, its legs making running motions while still airborne. If a cat could have burned rubber, that one would have. Before Mark and Jerry could calm down, Mrs. Telford plunged her arm up to the elbow into her cavernous bathrobe pocket and drew her weapon. With deadly accuracy, she seasoned each slug generously with a mountain of salt.

The laughter ended abruptly as Mark glanced dumbfoundingly at Jerry, then back at the aborted race.

“Gosh, why’d you have to go and do that for?” asked Mark. “My slug was off to a good start.”

Mark had almost forgotten that this whole scenario was intended as nothing more than a prank. He’d actually kindled a fondness for the slimy little critters.

“I guess I failed to mention that slugs aren’t allowed on my table,” Mrs. Telford replied, her eyes twinkling mischievously as she admired her handiwork. Then, as an afterthought, added, “I don’t think either one of these slugs are up to any more racing.”

With that said, she shrieked with laughter, sounding just like the wicked witch in the movie, “The Wizard of Oz.”