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For those of you brave enough to look at this page who would like to know more about Banana Slugs, here is some information: Banana Slugs are the second largest slug in the world, growing up to 25 cm long. They are so named because very often their coloring resembles a banana, bright yellow body with black spots. Solid greenish, pale brown and even almost white specimens can be found locally too. They can change their color slightly over time, becoming more intense or paler as the light, moisture and food allows. These colors help them to camouflage with the leaves on the forest floor. The Banana Slug lives in moist forest floors along the Pacific Coast of North America from California to Alaska. It is a decomposer, which means it chews up leaves, and animal droppings and other dead plant material and recycles it into soil. One of their favorite foods seems to be mushrooms. In the process of eating, they also spread seeds and spores. They can be seen migrating across the path on dark damp days and at night or climbing up stumps looking for a dark place to hide. Once they find a dark damp spot to hide out on dry days, they will usually come back to that same spot, preferring to hide alone. They can fit into amazingly small spaces, this probably helps them to find enclosed areas that are still damp when most others have dried outThe Banana Slug Just how slow are they? A banana slug would take nine hours and 15 minutes to finish the 100-yard dash, "assuming it didn't stop for a snack along the way." A slug's jaw is a solid structure that drops "like a guillotine -- to latch onto a lichen, leaf, or whatever. The mouth, bearing as many as 27,000 sharp, backward-pointing teeth, rasps at whatever it is feeding upon. Like sharks, slugs routinely lose and replace their teeth. Though slow,
slugs are remarkably strong. Throughout the Northwest, slugs have been
cast as mascots of the bizarre" -- in tee-shirts, carvings, kitchen
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