See what I found today......

SLUGS

One worm and three slippery slugs.........

I found three slugs this morning - the day of my citizenship pledge of allegiance - when I was out saving several worms from drowning in pools of rainwater.

I placed them (the slugs and the worms) in my compost bin and then did some research. I wanted to know if the slugs were they the same species as we get in England. Were they?

This is what I discovered.

§  Only 5% of the slug pop­u­la­tion is above ground at any one time. The oth­er 95% is un­der­ground di­gest­ing your seed­lings, lay­ing eggs, and feed­ing on roots and seed sprouts.

§  A slug’s blood is green.

§  Most slugs eat rot­ting ve­get­a­tion, but a few are car­ni­vor­ous.

§  Slugs do play an im­port­ant role in eco­logy by eat­ing de­com­pos­ing ve­get­a­tion.

§  A slug lays 20-100 eggs sev­er­al times a year.

§  Slug eggs can lay dormant in the soil for years and then hatch when con­di­tions are right.

§  Gast­ro­pods form the second largest class in the an­im­al king­dom, the largest be­ing the in­sects.

§  Slugs are herm­aph­rod­ite, hav­ing both male and fe­male re­pro­duct­ive or­gans.

§  Slugs have been present since the end of the last ice age.

§  A slug can live for up to 6 years.

§  A slug is ba­sic­ally a mus­cu­lar foot, and the name ‘gast­ro­pod’ lit­er­ally means stom­ach foot.

§  Un­like snails that hi­bern­ate dur­ing winter, slugs are act­ive whenev­er the tem­per­at­ure is above 5°C.

§  A slug is es­sen­tially a snail without a shell.

§  Slugs used to live in the ocean, which is why they still need to keep moist.

§  One in­di­vidu­al field slug has the po­ten­tial to pro­duce about 90,000 grand­chil­dren.

§  It’s been es­tim­ated that an acre of farm­land may sup­port over 250,000 slugs.

§  Re­search has shown that the av­er­age well-watered garden has a pop­u­la­tion of over 20,000 slugs and snails.
YEP! Same species as we get in the UK. Bet we brought them over...........

WOW!! Welcome, slugs, to my compost tub, hotel to scores of worms!