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The First Time I Ever Saw A Banana Slug
The Pacific Banana Slug is the Second Largest Land Slug on Earth
The first time I ever saw a banana slug, I was sitting under a redwood on the UC Berkeley campus with a cup of coffee, hoping to get sober after an all-night acid trip. I hadn’t been in California 72 hours, and in those hours I had several unpleasant adventures, including getting dosed with LSD by a fellow named Steve Camacho, waking up on a hilltop in Canyon surrounded by fog and a herd of worried does, driving over Grizzly Peak in the fog, and now, finally, sitting beside Strawberry Creek under a redwood with a cup of coffee trying to settle down and wait for Sproul Hall to open so I could go register. Other students were sitting under other redwood trees drinking coffee and reading newspapers. It seemed safe, healthy, normal, and then the ground in front of me started moving.
The yellow-green thang moved at the speed of a Tai Chi teacher and it kind of glowed.
No. I said to myself. This is too late in the trip to hallucinate. Therefore That is Real.
“Excuse me,” I asked the guy sitting under the nearest redwood. “What is that?”
He put down his paper and peered into the duff. “Banana slug.”
“Are they harmless?” I asked.
“Just don’t touch `em, and don’t eat `em,” he said…
