When I was young, I’ll have you know,
I was gleaming yellowish white,
But now I have reached adulthood,
I’m black as the dark-mooned night.
I gobble all the mouldy leaves
In the garden bed you dug:
They help to keep me sleek and slick,
For I’m a bold black slug.
Plant a field of cabbages
For making sauerkraut;
I’ll strip ’em all to skeletons
For yards and yards about.
The way you swear, you’d think that I
Was just some loutish thug—
I’m not! My taste’s impeccable
For I’m a bold black slug.
And when the garden is all bare
And molluscs all grow lean,
While you rest, I do my best
To keep the garden clean,
Or come inside and leave a trail
Across your mohair rug—
’Twill look sublime marked with slime
For I’m a bold black slug.
I know I am a cannibal—
But that isn’t why you hate me:
I’ll eat phonebooks, dog shit too;
That’s not why you berate me.
I suspect my name is mud
Because it rhymes with ugh.
Be off! I’ll wag my head at you!
I am a bold black slug.
Source material.
Arion ater is one of the commonest slugs in British gardens. The young are pale in colour, but gradually darken with age, starting with the tentacles. Black slugs will eat almost anything, including each other, and when the Yellow Pages are delivered on doorsteps, it is a well known fact that black slugs race the householder for them, as if hurrying for a gourmet meal. When frightened, a black slug will hunch itself up like a hedgehog, but when irritated, it will lift the front portion of its body off the ground, and waggle it furiously from side to side. The effect when two or more slugs are gathered is likely to be comical, as Lionel E. Adams (The Collector’s Manual of British Land and Freshwater Shells, Leeds, 1896, p. 24) observes: “It is ludicrous to see half-a-dozen of the creatures wagging together.”
Giles Watson (2005) in ‘Watson, L., and Dallwitz, M.J. 2005 onwards. The families of British nonmarine molluscs (slugs, snails and mussels).
Version: 23rd October 2005.