The Return Of Limax Maximus

     Yes, the Great Gray Slugs are back -- or at least out of hiding.  They're nocturnal and fairly shy, so you're unlikely to see them all that often.  Nevertheless, they are well-established in North America, having immigrated form Europe like many of us.

     They were defying gravity over a yard up on Roseholme Cottage's back fence, late last night:

     They were circling one another and then one led the other on a brief chase even higher.  This is kind of interesting and would be hot, hot stuff to another slug, since they are generally solitary hunters (of, among other things, smaller species of slugs) and the "circling and chasing" behavior is courtship.  Their love lives are unusually gymnastic; Great Gray Slug couples end up hanging in midair from a long rope of slug-slime, coiled together like ornamental ironwork.  Afterwards, one climbs back up the rope and the other drops to the ground, no doubt shrieking with glee all the way.  ...So if you are walking outdoors on a humid late-summer evening?  Be careful what branches you walk under.

     (One of the slugs briefly climbed to the very top of the six-foot-tall fence and rared up!  I waited to see if it would howl at the moon, but no such luck.)

     For those of you who dislike huge, leopard-spotted slugs (who haven't said anything at all about you, by the way), here's a nice sunset sky instead: