Chased By A Giant Slug

For the past few weeks, I’ve noticed that there has been a slug trail on the rug at the bottom of our garage stairs that lead up to the kitchen door. Every time I’d walk on that rug, I’d shudder just a little because I’m not overly fond of slugs and the thought that one was lurking somewhere in the garage did not bring peace, happiness or serenity to my slug-hating heart.

Well, Monday night, I had to go out into the garage for something. I put my foot on the first step into the garage, looked down and there on the stairs. Was. The. Slug.

I stared. I shrieked. I threw my hands up in the air and fluttered them wildly.

I jumped up and down. I shrieked again.

And then I turned and ran back into the house.

My gym mates would have never even recognized me. The slow-moving, middle-aged woman who plodded along beside them on the treadmill week after week had been miraculously transformed into a gold medal runner.

I flung myself through the kitchen. I screeched around the corner. I sprinted down the hall. I hit the stairs at warp speed squared,

All the while, I was imagining that the slug had suddenly morphed into a huge creature and was at that very moment racing behind me through the house, breathing down my neck and plotting (in its little slug brain) my imminent capture and eventual demise.

I thundered up the stairs, feet pounding in horror, heart throbbing in terror, mind bursting with the dreaded slug news that I would have to share with my unsuspecting family. I flew around the corner of the bedroom where Steve was seated in a comfortable chair, calmly reading a book. He had obviously heard me coming (who could miss the sound of all that gasping and galloping?) and he stared at me in some curiosity, waiting for me to catch my breath and find the words that would best communicate to his husbandly ears the magnitude of the situation.

I was finally able to gasp out the hideous, horrible, horrendous news.

“Steve! There. Is. A. Slug!” (I almost added, “And it’s chasing me up the stairs” but some part of my fevered brain wisely cautioned against it.)

Steve stared at me and I stared at him. And then I repeated myself in even more hysterical fashion. “A slug! Downstairs! In the garage! Do something!”

Now obviously Steve knew this wasn’t an emergency. This was not a rattlesnake curled up in the corner. It was not a rabid raccoon racing through the dining room. This was a slug.

Slugs, by their very nature, are sluggish. Slow-moving. Non-panic-inducing.

However, Steve has been married to me for a long time and he is wise enough to know that anything that causes me to sprint and thunder around the house deserves his immediate attention.

So in order that I should be impressed with his great husbandly concern, he mustered up some alacrity and a semblance of urgency and diligently plodded downstairs to deal with this threat to Homeland Security, not to mention Smith Wife Happiness.

I stayed upstairs in the bedroom, wringing my hands and hoping against hope that the slug had not by that time grown to fifteen feet, attacked Steve and carried him away to the dreaded Kingdom of the Slugs.

Then the thought occurred to me that I should go and share the news with Sarah so that she would be prepared to run for her life should the slug escape from Steve and come chasing after her as well.

She listened calmly to my ranting, watched curiously the flinging of my hands through the air, and gave me the most sympathetic look she could muster in the face of this extreme non-emergency.

A few minutes later, my own personal Sir Galahad returned from his mission. He did not thunder or sprint or show any signs of anxiety. He merely stated with the greatest of masculine calm, “Dear, the slug is now outside.”

I shrieked, “You touched it? You got near it? You saw it up close?”

Another round of hand wringing and hand flinging followed at the very thought of having actual contact with the terrorizing creature. I finally sat down on a chair in the bedroom and took some deep cleansing breaths.

By this time, Sarah had joined Steve in the room and the two of them gathered around me, trying to express their great sympathy and compassion as best they could while all the while attempting to keep themselves from giggling at my unaccustomed display of drama.

When Steve finally realized that I was going to survive the trauma and was becoming a little calmer he jokingly said, “I bet you made such a big deal out of this whole thing so that you could have a new blog post to write.”

Sarah burst out laughing and said, “Yeah, Mom! You just wanted something to write about on Smithellaneous!”

I put on my most offended face and said, “I am not going to write about this!”

And they said, “Yeah, right.”

And I thought to myself, “Well, maybe . .”