A Poem about Slugs…

Here’s a silly poem I wrote a few years ago when I was struggling to build a balanced relationship with the slugs in my allotment. It’s called ‘If Slugs looked like Polar Bears’.

If Robert Burns can write a poem addressed to a mouse, then maybe it’s ok for me (another Scot) to write an ode to a slug. May at least raise a smile.

George Dow – Green Christian

If slugs looked like polar bears

How would we feel?

Would it make us less willing to squash them with our welly boot heel?

If slugs looked like kittens

Would we keep them as pets?

Cuddle and stroke them and spend small fortunes at vets?

If slugs looked like puppies

Would we take them for walks?

On leads in the park (or more realistically) carry them in a box?

If slugs looked like snails

Would that would be OK?

With their beautiful shells and their swagger and sway

But slugs look like other slugs

I can’t see improvement

Except to say how effective they are as a dangerous, radical underground movement

So let’s hear it for slugs

Let’s embrace wildlife’s diversity

And keep a place in the ecosystem

For horrible, slimy creatures as well as those which are cuddly or pretty

Having said that, I don’t believe a word and will continue to rail

Against these ugly wee rascals who eat my veg and leave a silvery trail

Let’s fill them with nematodes, colonise their inners

So that I can continue to eat my dinners

In peace without bothering whether

Tomorrow’s beans and kale has been decimated all the gither

But if we truly believe that we need to take care

Of all of God’s creatures who only take their fair share

Then let’s stand up for the slug

Let’s give it some glory

And leave it to live as part of life’s wondrous story.