Meaningless Rant: The Slug

I was stumbling home, oversized suitcase in tow on a night so heavily laden with fog that near-microscopic droplets of water had gathered on my glasses as I passed through the video game-like atmosphere.  I pulled my suitcase up the two steps to the mini-sidewalk that led to my building’s front door when something caught my eye.

Green and yellow.  Long and straight, with edges curled under, and stems sticking out from one end.  A leaf, I thought, even as my foot swerved to avoid it.

I stopped pulling my bag.  Had I really seen two stems on the end of the leaf?

I shifted so my shadow wouldn’t block the light from the front door and squatted down.  Two stems, indeed.  Two antenna, in fact.

I had never seen such a thing before.  Curious, squatting on the damp walkway in front of my building, I watched it inch along.

“Are you okay?” asked a concerned couple as they came home.

I smiled.  “Yeah.  I just noticed this thing on the ground – it remind me of the giant snail I saw in Macau, but it doesn’t have a shell.”  Only in retrospect can I fathom how strange I must have seemed.

“It looks like a slug,” said the man.

My response, wherein I was articulating the idea that perhaps I should move it before it gets stepped on, was overridden by the woman’s shriek of terror – at the slug itself, or at the idea of moving it, I’m not sure.

The couple left as I sat there thinking.  I could leave it and let nature take its course.  But then, if I knowingly leave it in a walkway, am I as good as killing it myself?  Am I killing it intentionally, even?

I blocked the path as children came racing down the walkway.  I frowned as the slug experienced a near-miss with a shoe.

If it was a cute creature, most people would feel compelled to help it.  When it’s a slug, sensible women scream and run away.

I pulled the convention pass off my neck and scooped up the slug.  I deposited it in the nearby grass.  A child help the doors open for me as I pulled my luggage in the main door.  What goes around comes around, perhaps.