Science Gone Wrong

Early in the spring I lifted up a walkway stone in our backyard so we could discover what was crawling around under the stone. We found a collection of little white eggs near a bunch of Rollie Pollies. I thought it might be fun to watch what would hatch from the eggs. I scooped up a bunch of the eggs and placed them in a clear plastic container and a week later I realized that I was wrong. Dead wrong. I thought we would be looking a little Rollie Pollie bugs. Nope. These little eggs started to move around like little blogs. I few days later I realized what we had. Slugs! Slugs and more slugs! I probably had about 30 slugs moving slowly around the container. I didn’t want slugs. I was going to release them, but I didn’t want slugs in my yard either. Killing them wasn’t an option for me either. I couldn’t kill slugs that I took from the natural environment and hatched from eggs. So in the clear plastic container they remained. They grew slowly and seemed to enjoy the little bits of fruit or vegetables I threw in from time to time.

 My kids didn’t want to touch them. I didn’t want to touch them. Fortunately, when I opened the lid these little slugs weren’t jumping out on me. Slugs are sluggish. Boy am I thankful for that. I could keep the lid off and throw in some food without coming close to a slug.

 When it came time to move the slugs to a bigger home I decided to use an old large glass pickle jar. I poked tiny holes in the lid to let in air. Note that I poked tiny holes. I did not want any slugs escaping. I put in some dirt at the bottom cut some leafy celery stems and added a little moisture to the dirt and then I had to transfer the slugs. I managed to do so without touching any! I used a disposable chopstick to move all the slugs from one home to the other. They are still quite small and I’m hoping they don’t get too big. Meanwhile, we have a little interesting jar in our kitchen. Yes, the kitchen. Need I remind you that I made the air holes very small. I don’t want any of these creature to escape. I store them on top of our worm bin.