Children’s Stories from the Viewpoint of a Slug

by Gerrard Wllson

  *

  “Fred, what do you get when you cross a slug with a snail?”

  “Go on, tell me,” Fred replied.

  “A slug with a haversack on his back!”

  “Your jokes are getting so bad, Bert, I think it is only a matter of time until you are sent to the loony bin.”

  “Now, there’s no need to be like that,” Bert answered, hurt to the core that his friend could say such a cruel thing.

  “No need to say it, you say?” Fred grumbled. “Try switching places with me. Then we will see how you really feel!”

  Meanwhile,” said Bert, on a lighten tone, “do you want to hear the one about the slug with a hump?”

  “Why me?” Fred blubbered, as he tugged at his hair in a most alarming manner. “I give up. I just give up!”

  Pointing to feet his shoes, Bert said, “You give up? What about me, then?” he asked. “I bought this pair of shoes only last week and there is already a hole in one of them.”

  “Slugs! Shoes! Humps! Haversacks!” Fred bemoaned. “I can’t take it anymore! Will somebody please send ME to the loony bin – anywhere away from you and your terrible jokes!”

  Watching his friend writhing upon the floor in front of him, without any idea as to why he was doing it, Bert said, “Was it something I said, Fred?”

  Sunday Morning Coming Down

  ‘’In a Sunday morning garden, wish it lord the slugs were here,

  Wish they hadn’t been killed and eaten, by hedgehogs that didn’t care,

  That maimed and left them dying, my friends and family on the ground,

  On a lawn so neat and cared for, Sunday morning coming down.’

  Sunday morning found me sleeping it off, the after effects of the party, celebrating the 21st birthday of my friend Sluggy, trying to come to terms with all the terrible things that had happened during the worst day of my entire life. Let me explain...

  Hello, my name is Slimy and I am a slug. My best friend is also a slug. His name is Sluggy, he is older than I am by three full days – and he is famous. Everyone in the garden (including the snails) knows Sluggy. They all aspire to be just like him when they grow up.

  With his twenty-first birthday fast approaching (twenty-one days, that is), Sluggy wanted a party, a big party. Because we like him so much, it was no problem, no problem at all to honour his wish. We set about organising it, the party of the week, the party to beat all others, the celebrity slug party that soon had the whole garden buzzing with excitement...

  Two days later, with all of the preparations completed, every slug and snail within the garden (and some without) were drooling with anticipation for the mother of all parties to begin.

  It was a balmy Saturday evening (Saturdays are best for parties), the crickets were playing their wonderful tunes on their legs, the mosquitoes were buzzing their superb accompaniment, and the cats – the oftentimes dreaded cats – were in fine fettle, meowing their approval, from atop the rickety fence old at the rear of the garden.

  Light, we had fantastical party lights strung across the garden (the fireflies, having heard of Sluggy’s impending birthday bash, had graciously offered their services, hoping to bathe in his reflected celebrity sheen).

  At six thirty in the evening, the guests began arriving. There were so many of them, my stalked eyes and sluggish old brain struggled, trying to keep up, to remember all of their names. Here are just a few; Squelch and Squish, Sloopsh and Sloorsh, and Slugsh and Squigsh,  famous  celebrities in the slug world. Snails, I must not forget the snails; amongst the many fine snail guests invited were Shnailonny and Snailary, Snailanny and Snailarnold, and Snailecca and Snailama. There was even talk of Snailcharles and Snailcamilla attending. It was most certainly going to be the mother of all parties, Sluggy’s party, the party to beat all others.

  “Hello,” said Sluggy, to a particularly tall snail and his consort, as they slithered their way past, heading for the bed of dahlias beneath the apple tree. The snails’ nodded regally, but said nothing, not one word left their thin, blue coloured lips.

  “Blue bloods?” Sluggy mused, daring to believe that it was true.

  Having missed the snails (regal or otherwise), but noticing the quandary my friend was so obviously in, I said, “Pardon?”

  “Oh, it’s nothing,” he replied, feeling foolish to have even considered it. Changing the subject, nodding into the garden, he said, “Well, what do you think of it, the party?”

  My stalked eyes scanned the myriad slimy bodies (with and without shells), and I replied, “There must be a hundred guests...” After scanning the garden for a second time, I added, “Perhaps two hundred on a good day, err, evening.”

  Laughing at the difficulty I was experiencing with working out how many guest might actually be there, Sluggy said, “There are two hundred and twenty-five guests, not counting the crickets and mosquitoes, that is.”

  “No,” I agreed, “crickets and mosquitoes could never be considered guests.”

  Suddenly all of the music stopped. The garden became deathly quiet.

  “What?” I asked, all eyes fixed doggedly upon me, burning in to me (including those of the crickets and mosquitoes).

  “Sorry, mosquitoes and crickets,” said Sluggy, “he gets a bit carried away, at times.”

  Moving on, trying to forget my political incorrectness, my insensitivity to certain insects, and whether they might or might not be considered guests, I said, “When does the dancing begin?”

  Smiling, winking a stalked eye, Sluggy replied, “As soon as you invite someone onto the dance floor.”

  “The dance floor?”

  Nodding towards the centre of the garden, he said, “The lawn, you berk!”

  The penny having dropped, I said, “Oh, the lawn!” Recomposing myself, fighting back, I said, “Why didn’t you say so?” My slug friend, however, having a fast mind and even faster tongue, cut me down again, saying, “I just did, berk face!”

  With tongue in cheek, knowing when to call it a day, I slimed my way across to the side of the lawn, where a particularly large female slug (a real beauty) was listening to the music, alone. “Hi,” I said, introducing myself, “my name is Slimy and I am a slug.”

  Laughing at my corny introduction, she replied, “My name is Sloamy and I am also a slug.”

  “Sloamy?” I chuckled, “Why, that’s my all-time favourite name, it’s my dream name!”

  “Are you going to stand there all evening,” she asked, “flattering me, or are you going to ask me up for a dance?”

  “Come on, then” I said, my green, stalked eyes locking with hers, “let’s boogie!”

  Having slimed our way out to the centre of the lawn, we began dancing; dancing like our lives depended on it. For those of you who have no idea how slugs manage to dance, let me explain... Slugs (and snails to a lesser degree) lean. Yes, we lean; we lean from side to side. I know, I know, it may not sound much like dancing to those of you who are fortunate enough to have legs, but for a slug (with no legs) it certainly is dancing, it’s wild, excited, wanton, delightful dancing.

  We had no sooner entered the dance floor and begun dancing, when the other slugs and snails (far too many as far as I was concerned), copying our example, also entered it. In less than fifteen minutes (slugs and snails are slow-movers, remember) the dance floor was packed solid with leaning, brown and green slimy bodies, dancing like there was no tomorrow. They kept on coming, entering the dance floor until we were crammed so tightly together we had more in common with sardines packed in a tin, than with our kind. Then it happened – the calamity – and it was terrible, so terrible...

  We heard a rumbling, far away in the distance at first, that became louder and louder. At first, we thought it was thunder, but there was no lightning or rain, only noise; rumbling, thundering noise getting louder and louder, and closer and closer. As it got closer and closer and louder and louder, we felt, every last one of us, that it had be an earthquake, and if not it was surely a n’clear
attack by the HU-MAN THEINGS (yes, we knew all about them and their deadly arsenals of rockets, bombs and n’clear weapons).

  We were still crammed shoulder to shoulder when we saw them, when we saw them scrambling their way over the garden fence. After stopping briefly atop it, to regroup, they made their way down the other side, invading the garden and our party.

  “Run!” someone shouted. “IT’S HEDGEHOGS! “

  “It’s a whole family of them!” another slug shouted. He was right, a entire family of hedgehogs, hunting in a pack, baying for blood, were upon us.

  We had no chance. What hope could a slug or a snail have of escaping hedgehogs, lightning fast animals (in comparison to our slow movements) intent on securing their next meal, at any cost.

  Snarling, begroaning its acute hunger, the first hedgehog, the father, said, “Come; come my children, there’s fine food, here, enough dainty morsels for us all to enjoy.”

  “Yes, my children,” snarled the mother hedgehog, “the dainties of treats – snails and slugs, in abundance.”

  The rest of the family, three children, following their parents’ example, ploughed into the snails and slugs assembled on the dance floor, desecrating them, in profusion.

  Slugs and snails cannot scream (have you ever heard one scream?), but if we had been able to scream, each one of us would have been screaming, screaming at the top of our voices, at the monsters attacking us, screaming at them to leave us alone. Unable to scream, all that we did, all that we were capable of doing was stare at the monsters, hoping our demise would be fast, that it would soon be over, while whispering goodbye to our loved ones....

  “Let me have that one!” the girl hedgehogs yelled at one of her brothers.

  “No!” he roared defiantly, tearing a strip of succulent flesh from the particularly plump slug, “I saw it first!”

  “Mum!” the girl hedgehog yelled. “He’s got my food and he won’t give it to me!”

  Hissing her displeasure at her wayward children, the mother hedgehog grabbed hold of the slug and promptly ate it. The two children, taken aback by their mother’s unexpected act, said nothing, not a single word passed their blood-soaked lips. Returning their attention to eating their fill, they dived headlong into the affray.

  I was in a daze, confused, in denial of the bloodbath that I was witnessing. “Stay there, Sloamy,” I said to my dancing partner, “I am going to see Sluggy, he’ll know what we should do!”

  “Sluggy, Sluggy! Where are you?” I called out to my lifelong, best friend. Then I saw him, over to one side of the dance floor, and I said, “Sluggy! This can’t really be happening, can it?” I was hoping he would have been be able to tell me that everything was going to be all right, but he didn’t. No. Instead of telling me that everything was going to be all right, he just shrugged his shoulders, showing that he was as lost as I as to what we should do – then he was gone. The mother hedgehog, spotting Sluggy, skewering him with one of her long pointed claws, scoffed him, with gusto.

  “Sluggy!” I cried out, stunned, agog by what I had just seen. Then she saw me, the mother hedgehog, spotting me with her black, beady eyes, began creeping towards me. Was that the end of me; was that to be my destiny, eaten alive by a hedgehog? Read on, my friend, read on...

  As I slimed my way under the gate, having escaped (at least for the moment) the black, beady eyes of the mother hedgehog (another, even fatter slug than me had caught her attention), I entered the world of the street. Despite having escaped from the garden of destruction, I was suffering from shock; I was sick to the core by what I had seen, the bloodbath I had witnessed, the murder of so many innocents. Every slug and snail in the garden (apart from me, that is) had been murdered – eaten – by the hedgehogs that had invaded the party, Sluggy’s party, the party to beat all others. “Oh, what is to become of me, Sluggy,” I sobbed, “now that I am alone, so very alone?”

  The next morning, Sunday, found me thinking more positively, much more positively. You see, although I had not slept a wink, I had used the time advantageously to devise a plan, a cunning plan to avenge the death of so many innocent slugs and snails.  “Right,” I said, speaking quietly, “I will need some supplies... I wonder where I can get them.”

  That evening, with supplies at the ready, I set about implementing my plan, the neat little plan I had devised to punish the family of hedgehogs that, in the one fell swoop, had wiped out an entire population of slugs and snails

  With my duffle bag strung across my shoulder (we slugs do have shoulders – really!) and a tin balanced precariously atop my slippery head, I slimed my way around the gate (it was ajar) and re-entered the garden, the garden of the massacre the previous evening. Moving carefully, cautiously, surreptitiously, more watchful than I had ever before slimed, I arrived at the scene of the crime. “This is the spot,” I whispered, “where they came over the fence, that rat-bag family of hedgehogs.” Lowering my slippery head, the tin (it was cat food, god bless the cats for donating it to the cause – and for opening it!) slid silently to the soft ground. Nudging the tin over, I giggled as I watched the cat food dribble slowly from it. “Not too fast,” I said warily, “because I only have the one tin.” Nudging the tin with my head, I pushed it all the way back through the garden, to the gate, leaving a trail of ever so smelly cat food in its wake.

  Sliming my way around the gate (I thanked my god that no HU-MAN THEING had since closed it) and onto the footpath, I headed for the curb. Stopping at the edge, I abandoned the tin of cat food (it was now almost empty). My stalked eyes scanned the street, left, right and then left again, to see if it was safe to cross. Satisfied that this was the case, that no traffic was approaching, I slimed my way across as fast as my trail would carry me. Reaching the other side, breathing a sigh of relief, I mounted the curb, crossed the path and secreted myself at the base of a wall, where I waited.

  Pardon? You want to know what I had inside the duffle bag? Read on, my friend, read on...

  As the afternoon progressed, and the sun grew lower in the sky, sitting in the shade at the base of that wall, I knew the time of reckoning was fast approaching, when my plan (if it worked, that is) to avenge the deaths of my compatriots and friends, sprang into action. Sitting there, on that warm, humid day, I unfortunately fell fast asleep...

  Waking up with a snort, I heard voices, familiar voices, voices of a mother, father and three terribly spoilt children – hedgehogs – arguing and squabbling about something.  “I want all of the cat food!” one of the child hedgehogs said bossily.

  “That’s not fair,” one of her brothers, protested. “She just ate a huge worm!”

  “It’s working!” I whispered, hardly believing my luck.” They’re following the trail of cat food.” Then I realised, I remembered that I had not done everything, that the last part of my plan had not yet been set into place, and I panicked.

  “I must put it on, I must!” I bemoaned, struggling with my slug teeth, to open the duffle bag, “I MUST PUT IT ON!” However, the bag (the cords of the top having knotted) remained stubbornly shut. Frustrated to the extreme, I yelled, “No! No! This can’t be happening to me, IT CAN’T!” They heard me, the family of hedgehogs, emerging round the side of the gate, onto the path, spotted me on the other side of the road. “Look!” one of the children shouted. “FOOD!”

  He was right, in their eyes, in their world that was all that I was, food, nothing more, nothing less.

  One of the other child hedgehogs, the girl, spotting the tin of cat food, lying abandoned on its side, cried out, “Look! I bags it first!” If she thought those words would have secured the prize for her alone, she was certainly mistaken, for no sooner had she mouthed those words, each member of her family, mother, father, brothers – and her made a beeline for the tin. Pandemonium ensued.

  Seizing the opportunity this offered, what I believed was my only chance to avenge the deaths of so many of my friends and compatriots I attacked my duffle bag with a renewed vengeance. It ripped open. I had do
ne it. Wasting no time, not even one second, I grabbed hold of the bag with my pointy sharp teeth and shook it, I shook it like there was no tomorrow, spilling its contents – blue coloured particles – onto the path. “I’ve done it!” I cried out, hardly believing my luck, “I’ve actually done it!”

  Gazing furtively to the other side of the street, I was relieved to see the hedgehog family still fighting hammer and tongs over the tin, so laying down, rolling over and over again in the blue coloured particles, I covered my green slimy body with every last granule there was.

  What? You want to know what the blue coloured particles were? Hah, that’s easy to explain – Slugtox, snail and slug killer, par excellence. Pardon? You want to know why a slug would want to immerse itself in such a toxic substance?  I’ll tell you why, to poison the rat-bag family of hedgehogs that had killed his friends, and then some. Yes, yes, he knew he would die when they ate him. He reckoned so also would the ‘lucky’ hedgehog doing the deed. Now back to the story...

  “Come on, you old rat-bags!” I yelled, my fear gone, replaced by a burning desire to punish the hedgehogs from hell. “Or are you afraid of me, you spiny old flea bags!”

  “He called us flea bags,” said the mother hedgehog to her spouse. “Are you going to let him get away with that, dear?”

  The father hedgehog, having a bad tempered disposition at the best of times, yelled, “I am coming for you, you anaemic looking slug, and we I get hold of you I will be eating you up, every last grisly bit!”

  Chuckling to myself, I dared the hedgehog to come get me, “I’m waiting, syringe skin...”

  “Daddy, he called you syringe skin,” the girl hedgehog said to her father. “Tell him that’s not so, that out skins are fine-tuned pieces of evolution!”

  The girl hedgehog’s fine words, however, missed her father’s rudimentary brain, though he did get the jist of what she was saying, so huffing and puffing, egged on by his wife and three spoilt siblings, he stepped off the path, into the road.

  WHAM! BLAM!! KAPAM!!! The father slug, struck squarely by the quarter past four number twenty-three bus to Swanpool, lay flat on the road, stuck to the road, flatter than a piece of tissue paper, quite dead.

  The hedgehog family, the widow and her three children, stood there, staring at what had been a husband and father, in shock, in total, utter, mind numbing, brutal shock at the terrible, terrible tragedy that had befallen him...

  Spitting a wayward blue coloured particle from out of my mouth, I could hardly believe my luck, that one of the bad, ever so bad family of hedgehogs had got his comeuppance. However, there were still four of them left...so calling over, daring them to come get me, I said, “Come and get me, toad fish looks!”

  “Mum!” the girl hedgehog cried out to her mother. “He said we look like toad fish!”

  “Enough, child!” the mother scolded. “Have you no respect for the dead?”

  “But, but...”

  “Away with you,” the mother howled. “It was your constant griping that got your poor father killed.”

  “But, but...” the girl hedgehog protested.

  Pulling out one of her sharp spines, the mother threatened her daughter with it.”I said, away with you!” she quipped. “And that goes for you, also,” she said pointing the spine at her two sons. “It’s high time all three of you left the nest!”

  “But we aren’t birds!” one of her sons interjected.

  “I said away!” the mother thundered, storming off down the road.

  Left alone, the three children looked so vulnerable, and for a moment, I actually felt sorry for them, but it was only for a moment, mind you. You see, a young woman passed by, carrying a wicker basket with a bottle of milk sticking out of it. “Look,” said the girl hedgehog, “fresh milk for our supper!”

  “Yes,”   one of her brothers replied, “and, who knows, she might even have a cat – and where felines roam, there is sure to be cat food.”

  “Hurray!” the three hedgehogs rejoiced.

  Having watched this, the child hedgehogs rebounding from defeat, I sighed a long, thoughtful sigh, and said, “Ah well, one out of five isn’t so bad, I suppose.”

  The child hedgehogs having disappeared around the corner of the road, scurrying after the woman and her precious cargo of fresh milk, left me in a quandary, a dilemma. Having lost all of my friends and acquaintances, I had absolutely no idea what I might do. “Oh,” I bemoaned, “it’s so lonely without anyone to talk to, to share a dahlia or sweet william, with...” Remembering where I was, exposed on the path, and covered in Slugtox, I said, “I had better get off this path...in case a dog might appear.”

  After sliming my way under the nearest gate, and washing off the noxious, blue coloured substance in a puddle, I headed for a stand of succulent michaelmas daisies. Reaching it, I took a bite from one of the juicy leaves. “It’s not the same,” I groaned, “eating alone, with no one for company...”

  “But you aren’t alone,” a voice from deep within the stand of fine plants, replied.

  “Who’s that?” I asked shakily, thinking it a hedgehog playing games with me.

  “It’s me,” she said, emerging from the stand.

  “Sloamy! Is that really you?”

  “Yes,” she replied, “It really and truly is.”

  “But, but... I thought you were a g–”

  “A goner?” she said, wording it for me.

  Lowering my head, ashamed to have even considered her premature death, I was lost for words.

  Laughing (though discreetly, in respect for those who had lost their lives), Sloamy said, “Come on, we have a family to rear.”

  “A family?”

  “Yes,” she replied. “Don’t you realise there is a shortage of slugs, to eat all of the wonderful plants the HU-MAN THEINGS so thoughtfully provide for us in their gardens?” With that, two happy, contented and optimistic slugs disappeared into that stand of michaelmas daisies.

  THE END

  Some More Slug Jokes

  Bert: "Why did the slug cross the road?"

  Fred: "I don’t know – why DID the slug cross the road?"

  Bert: "To get itself squashed by the first car, tractor or lorry that happened to pass along it, of course. What other reason could he have had, being so brutally slow at doing such things?"

  Fred: "Perhaps it was a bit thick?"

  Bert: "It wasn’t, after the vehicle ran over it, hah hah!"