Gastropods demand your respect
and they deserve it! So do cane toads, which took over this entry, much like they've taken over the wetlands of western Australia.
Gastropods, aka slugs, are some of the most disrespected little dudes in nature. Snails have a better PR team (they’re cuter, because of the shell, somehow? don’t ask me to explain it), and slugs get a bad rap. People use their name as a synonym for “lazy,” and that’s just RUDE considering all slugs do is work for the collective good. If slugs could unionize, they would! If SNAILS were offered the opportunity, they absolutely would not. Snails are NIMBYs, you heard it here first!
Why do I think snails are NIMBYs? My argument is sound: they are lucky enough to have their own homes, and since they’re born with them, they think everyone without one must be a lazy whiner, so they spend all their free time waging war in their neighborhoods over mandatory parking minimums and zoning laws. And yes, snails really ARE born with the whole shell intact on their backs, although it’s really soft and wobbly at first, so they need to eat calcium ASAP to harden it up. Snails eat their own eggshells right after emerging from them, basically. And the really bitchy ones turn around and cannibalize their younger siblings who have the misfortune of being late bloomers and haven’t hatched yet. I’m telling you, snails are fucking brutal.
Slugs, on the other hand, never hurt anyone. Aside from the things they eat, which in the case of carnivorous slugs, can be anything from small insects to other, smaller slugs. Or dead ones. Okay, so, some slugs are cannibals too, but I’m just saying that snails are fucking sneakier about it. The rumina decollata is a type of meat-eating snail that has been conscripted to cop work as an invasive species to control the plant-eating snail population. It is never a good idea to deliberately introduce a non-native species to try to control a native species that’s giving you problems, by the way. Just ask Australia how the cane toad is working out for them!
Okay, you don’t have to dial up Australia, lord knows I want to be the one to tell you that it is going not well for the Aussies with regards to the cane toad. They were brought to Australia to eat pests in sugar cane fields, but nobody stopped to think about how cane toads are poisonous. Very poisonous. The secrete a “milky toxin” from behind their shoulders (weird choice but okay), and that poison (bufotoxin) kills whatever eats them, including dogs, monitor lizards, snakes, goannas, and freshwater crocodiles. Even their eggs and tadpoles are poisonous! Their shriveled-up dessicated remains are STILL poisonous! People used to think you could get high licking a cane toad (you cannot. But you will get very violently ill, which is maybe its own kind of kink, idk your life). These toads can also get fucking huge:
They eat birds, reptiles, other amphibians, and small mammals, because these toads are absolute units and they can do shit like that. They’re wreaking havoc on the native species of Australia, both by eating and being eaten by them, and there’s at least 200 million of these evolutionary genius little fuckers scampering across the landscape. Some estimates put the true count at nearing one billion. Efforts to control the cane toad population have included trapping campaigns and mass killings (death has come to the cane toads via golf clubs, cricket bats, and hemorrhoid cream. The RSPCA supported smearing trapped toads with hemorrhoid cream, which, I guess, kills them?!), but they’ve mostly given up by now.
The latest official government stance on saving Australia’s incredibly unique biodiversity from the scourge of the cane toad involves literally introducing more fucking cane toads into the wild — but only the tiniest ones, in hopes that the larger predators in that particular neck of the woods will eat them while they’re still small, get a tummy ache, and then remember it later when presented with the opportunity to eat a larger, more lethal dose of cane toad. This scheme requires a large amount of luck in terms of the timing, because cane toads grow rapidly, because they can eat pretty much anything. Anything at all. A cane toad presented with a pile of trash and scrap metal will not hesitate. Some researchers have tried serving toad sausages to northern quolls, a delightful little carnivorous marsupial, in hopes that the quolls will recognize the toads outside of a sausage whenever the toads show up in their long slow march across Australia. I personally believe it also requires some magical thinking to enact these taste-aversion strategies, but hey, I’m from a country that regularly drops tiny fish from a plane over a lake to stock it for rich fishermen who like fishing in remote mountain lakes that have no inlet or outlet (aka no way for new fish to get in there to boost the population, so we drop them out of the sky instead), so, I haven’t really got a leg to stand on when it comes to critiquing other nation’s doomed wildlife management efforts.
The worst part about the cane toad thing? They were successful at eating grubs in the sugar cane fields of Puerto Rico, which is why they were then imported to Australia. However, in Australia, they were brought in to eat cane beetles. Beetles, which usually hung out on the higher end of the cane stalk. Cane toads, being gigantic ponderous beasts, cannot jump very high. They couldn’t even get to the fucking beetles to eat them, which means this entire saga of widespread ecological devastation was entirely pointless to begin with. You just know a man came up with this idea! (And that is why you should never trust a man who doesn’t know the difference between a grub and a beetle.)
Anyway, so that’s the story of how the cane toad made Australia its bitch*, and it’s also a cautionary tale about how you should always be careful employing one carnivorous species to take out the others. Once you unleash the forces of nature, nature will not bend to your whims. You can’t fire nature when it becomes inconvenient for your purposes! Nature will make you its little bitch every time!
Believe it or not, I do remember that originally, I had a point about slugs. And that point is to tell you that the Royal Horticultural Society has officially recommended that gardeners in the U.K. embrace the slug visitors to their garden, as they have removed slugs from their pest list. The RHS has declared its intentions to begin a P.R. campaign in favor of slugs, in hopes of reaching people with the message that slugs are important for the biodiversity of your garden, and you should try non-lethal slug deterrent methods. I was going to say “the one good thing the British royal family ever did for us was the Royal Horticultural Society,” but a brief investigation reveals no trace of current royal funding to the RHS, so, I don’t think it’s actually got much of anything to do with the British royals, at least not anymore. I am relieved that I will not have to praise that particular subgroup of leeches in this newsletter!
So slugs, you see, are wonderful. I love slugs. There are so many beautiful kinds of slugs in this world! (Please note that I am specifically referring to terrestrial gastropods right now - sea slugs and freshwater slugs would take up a whole other post!) Slugs just wander around, doing their slug shit, not bothering anybody (except for the plants/other slugs they eat), and I think it’s great that the Royal Horticulturalists have decided to offer non-lethal alternatives for dealing with slugs in your garden. For a long time, slug prejudice has been slaying these lovely shimmering molluscs, and for what? False pretenses, that’s what! According to the Guardian article I am sourcing this from, “the slimy creatures are misunderstood, as only nine of the 44 recognized species of slug in the UK eat garden plants, according to research by the RHS.” We’ve been killing innocent gooey glistening yard visitors for no actual reason at all! Let our slug friends LIVE in peace, please, British gardening hobbyists!
"They also ‘play an important role in planet friendly gardening and maintaining a healthy ecosystem,’ according to the charity’s principal entomologist, Andrew Salisbury.” Let this be a reminder to us all that every little thing, no matter how slimy or gloppy, has a purpose in nature, and therefore on this planet. Including the cane toad, which, in its native habitat of south and central America, isn’t causing as much of a ruckus as it is down under. It’s got plenty of naturally occurring predators who don’t have to be taught not to eat it by underfunded harried wildlife biologist interns. In its homeland, the cane toad is just another glorious part of the ecosystem. I find this to be a comforting, beautiful fact. It makes me feel like each of us has our place, too, where we can simply exist and add to the splendid biodiversity of our habitats just by being. Isn’t that the dream?
*It must be noted that certain members of the Australian contingent of creatures are learning how to safely destroy and consume cane toads, and it’s not due to humans releasing tiny toads into the wild. Australian water rats have begun to kill cane toads, eat out their hearts, and carve out the juicier organs with what some observers have labeled “surgical precision.” The rakali (way cooler name for a water rat, if you ask me, which no one did) likes to remove the cane toad gallbladder before beginning their feast. As someone who had to have their human gallbladder removed at the tender age of 22, this is a little TOO close to home for me, but I respect the rakali’s hustle. Slay, queen! (Literally!) They go for the biggest cane toads, flip ‘em, stab ‘em, skin ‘em (but only the legs, since the back’s all poison-milky), and EAT THEM WHILE THE TOAD IS STILL ALIVE (they like to eat the thighs, since they’re farther from the milk poison glands). Metal!
Some crows and birds and snakes have been seen eating cane toads this way, too. Nature is always finding a way to make use of the shit we do to it, and I think that’s inspirational.