Slug eggs.

I often come across what I suspect to be slug eggs when digging or planting or just moving things from one spot to another. Today is the first time that I’ve found eggs I could identify without doubt as the nascent slugs were visible curled in their translucent beds, these tiny eggs of a transparent beauty to rival the wildflowers of early spring.

Slugs inhabit a no-man’s land of disquieting sliminess, small and harmless but unloved. Why is it, I wonder, that snails are beloved, cute, pictured on greeting cards and in children’s books, while slugs are so reviled? When I had a bed of strawberries I reviled them both equally, despoilers of my food; they would nibble the first bit of the berry that turned red, then eat it from the inside. I’d smash them and slice them and drown them willy-nilly, a fierce if futile war between farmer (such as I was) and pest. But now I have no competition with the slugs, so I mostly leave them alone and I’m able to simply appreciate the beauty of these tiny jewels enclosing tiny bits of life.

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Understanding

 One thing is absolutely definite: not everything that enters our ears penetrates our consciousness. Anything too far out of tune with our attitude is lost, either in the ears themselves or somewhere beyond, but it is lost.

 

– Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago