i.hate.slugs.

Ever since I saw the movie stand by me at age eight, I've hated slugs. I suppose they were actually leeches in the movie, but the theory's the same. Slimy and gross, both of them. Over the past few days, I've had more run ins with slugs than I care to mention. It actually became a joke between ben and me. It started during our hike of monadnock. The trail is very steep and rocky, definitely a hard climb and descent, so I sometimes grabbed trees to help steady or lower myself. After one such point, I felt something wet on my left hand. I thought it was just wet from the rain, but then I looked at it and saw a slug hanging out in my palm. I freaked out. There's really no other way to describe it. I'm pretty sure I screamed "get off" as I violently shook my hand and eventually had to rub it off on a rock. Ben just laughed his a** off at me. Nice friend, huh? I felt nauseous and desperately wanted my hand sanitizer. Since I didn't have that with me, I had to make do with rinsing my hands in a stream. Gross. The trip went on, uneventfully thank heavens. Since it had rained during the night, our tents were wet and muddy, so instead of rolling and packing them up in their bags, we shoved them in my trunk so we could hose them down once we were back at home. Later on sunday, ben sent me this email:
"...I helped my mom weed the garden in the backyard and as I was pulling wet stems out of the ground, I felt something slimy in between my fingers and discovered it to be a crushed slug. My reaction very much resembled your recent slug encounter...and then I could hear my own laughter turn into yours. I guess I had it coming."
Darn right he did! It gets better. I'd rinsed my tent off and dried it partially when we stopped at his parents house, but didn't have time for it to dry out completely. So yesterday, I set it up in the backyard so it wouldn't get moldy. After it had dried completely, I opened my trunk to get the storage bag, only to find a big, fat slug sitting by himself in the middle of my empty trunk. He even left a slimy little trail on the rug. Disgusting.