A musing upon slugs...

When I saw this photo of a drop of blood, I was absolutely amazed at just how beautiful it is! I really wouldn't mind this enlarged, framed and hung on my wall...

Anyway, this set me thinking. The first thought to come to mind was just how wonderfully we're made - all this design in one tiny drop of blood!

Next, I thought about how often we find beauty in unexpected places - the patch of wildflowers in an otherwise barren wasteland, the colourful graffiti which adorns the walls of some of the most depressing and run-down estates...

It also made me think of slugs!

"Slugs?" I hear you cry in a horrified voice, "Slugs?"

Yes, slugs! For a long time, I had to use a wheelchair whenever I went out. One of the things I really enjoyed was going out during the evening for a family walk - me in my wheelchair, whichever baby it happened to be at the time sitting on my lap, another in the pushchair, and the oldest walking. We made quite a procession, I can tell you - we became very well known in our local area! We discovered so much about where we lived on those walks - we saw places that we never noticed when we were in the car, it also had the added advantage that it wore the children out and they slept really well when we got back. Anyway, back to the slugs...

One of the drawbacks to the wheelchair was that it had quite a large 'footprint', and as I hated running over any creatures whatsoever, it could be quite a task to navigate around them. Naturally, when it had been raining, there were multitudes of slugs on the pavements - in my efforts to manipulate my wheelchair so that I didn't squash any of them, I began to notice how beautiful they actually are. I hadn't realised until this time how much variation there is in the colouring and pattern on your common slug! It seemed to me that no two are exactly the same. There is also a great variation in the size and shape of the slugs - amazing creatures indeed. I still don't want them in my garden, but I can't help appreciating them. This is something I doubt I would ever have noticed had it not been for the fact that I had to use the wheelchair - I wouldn't have been that close to them, and I certainly wouldn't have taken the time to examine them so closely!