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.