Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Dear slugs: I'm sorry

Slugs of the world: please DO NOT unite!

Recently there was an unfortunate incident involving one of your brethren or sistren or co-unspecified gender on a local gravel road, or paved road, or parking lot. The precise provenance of this ... incident ... remains unclear, for reasons which sadly, will become very clear.

I know, slugs, that you enjoy a good rain. Who doesn't? As long as nasty hard-skinned bipeds don't come out with their tempting bowls of beer, or magnifying glasses, or salt, few things are better than a "stroll" (slide) across a field of wet grass.

Or, presumably, a gravel road.

When said road is winding down great, swooping switchbacks from the spine of the Appalachian Mountains, and somebody -- an innocent victim, no less -- is flying downhill on a new bicycle, it is all he, or she, can do to maintain control and not slide off the shoulder into a tree.

When slug and bicycle meet, there can be only one outcome. Let me point out again that I, I mean someone, is the victim here as well.

Upon returning to his (or her) car, a certain bike rider found something gooey on his bike. It looked like a piece of brown chewing gum. He gamely wiped it off with a piece of gravel.

Then he found another one. And another. And another. Something had spattered the bicycle tube, the pedal, the gears, the back tube, and -- worst of all -- the front of his ankle.

Gritting his teeth heroically, he performed what might optimistically be termed an autopsy only to discover, too late, the horrific truth!

Even worse: an hour of drying air flowing across these ... pieces ... had dessicated them to the consistency of rubber.

What I Did On My Weekend: I accidentally made slug jerky.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Oh EEEEEWWW! Oh yuck! Oh yum!

Sam said...

You got the new bike!!!! How was it??!!
PS Maybe those were leeches.
PPS Maybe they were, in fact, slugs, and they were drawn to the beer oozing from your skin.

Peter Soutowood said...

I likes me some slug jerky.

New bike? All will be revealed soon. This is also the motto of the flasher.

S R Wood said...

New bike: yes. It is awesome. Leeches? Negative. Beer? No comment.

Laini Taylor said...

oh my goodness! gross AND awesome :-)