jeff kushner
Well-Known Member
Mags posted some pics the other day of one of her little guys munching down on a slug...... I thought; I'm a plumber by trade and even I thought it looked nasty..............but it got me to thinking...always dangerous as it can easily go either way....cool experiment or right off the rails!
Readers digest background;
Matilda has been with me since she was a quarter-sized runt in 6/20....maybe a month old when we found her unside on the walking trail and took her home. She has never even seen a slug that I know of. I decided to maybe introduce her to them, MIXED with foods she knows and loves and see what happens.
Sorry I didn't take any pics because my misting has ruined any thru-the-glass pics till I squeggie them.
I went outside when I got home at 1;30 yesterday and collected what I could from under things....got a half dozen nice fat worms and 2 slugs, a small and a large one.
The Scene;
Matilda is halfway in her fitting on high alert with mid 80's temps.....and had been watching me as I cleaned her dish etc....I came back in and dumped everything from a cup in front of her, the slugs both stuck so they landed a little further away when I shook them out..........she had already been poised to bite a worm, head cocked and all, but when those slugs became visible to her....like a LASER she crawled over the wriggling worms to the first slug and tore into it, then the 2nd, then some worms....
What I observed was a hardwired response to something she had never seen, or at least I think she has never seen. She was lovin her some slugness!
Comparison;
As some of you know, In the 70's I had a large-for-home 3-4ft Spectacled Caiman......and as much as I wanted to impart emotions & feelings to my pets, I learned that caimans are instinct-driven animals. There is no emotion, no buddy-buddy feeling, no "I won't bite you b/c you take care of me", just DNA driven instinct...."get too close, they'll call you lefty" kind of stuff.
Sidebar; If you partake, or did back then.... think of those long BS sessions where you become convinced that "he gets you", he won't bite you when you pet him.......yeah, I came THAT close but never was quite stupid enough to try petting him. LOL
Matilda is the same way......to me anyway(no, not with petting-lol), others of course are free to feel how they choose. I love that she's that way though as I did Greesh the Caiman.....it's like having a miniature roaming dinosaur in a tank in my room! How frigging cool is that? And this one isn't big enough to take a wrist off either if she gets out!
Oh, and Len, she took food into her fitting to eat.....guess it was happening more than I knew!
jeff
Readers digest background;
Matilda has been with me since she was a quarter-sized runt in 6/20....maybe a month old when we found her unside on the walking trail and took her home. She has never even seen a slug that I know of. I decided to maybe introduce her to them, MIXED with foods she knows and loves and see what happens.
Sorry I didn't take any pics because my misting has ruined any thru-the-glass pics till I squeggie them.
I went outside when I got home at 1;30 yesterday and collected what I could from under things....got a half dozen nice fat worms and 2 slugs, a small and a large one.
The Scene;
Matilda is halfway in her fitting on high alert with mid 80's temps.....and had been watching me as I cleaned her dish etc....I came back in and dumped everything from a cup in front of her, the slugs both stuck so they landed a little further away when I shook them out..........she had already been poised to bite a worm, head cocked and all, but when those slugs became visible to her....like a LASER she crawled over the wriggling worms to the first slug and tore into it, then the 2nd, then some worms....
What I observed was a hardwired response to something she had never seen, or at least I think she has never seen. She was lovin her some slugness!
Comparison;
As some of you know, In the 70's I had a large-for-home 3-4ft Spectacled Caiman......and as much as I wanted to impart emotions & feelings to my pets, I learned that caimans are instinct-driven animals. There is no emotion, no buddy-buddy feeling, no "I won't bite you b/c you take care of me", just DNA driven instinct...."get too close, they'll call you lefty" kind of stuff.
Sidebar; If you partake, or did back then.... think of those long BS sessions where you become convinced that "he gets you", he won't bite you when you pet him.......yeah, I came THAT close but never was quite stupid enough to try petting him. LOL
Matilda is the same way......to me anyway(no, not with petting-lol), others of course are free to feel how they choose. I love that she's that way though as I did Greesh the Caiman.....it's like having a miniature roaming dinosaur in a tank in my room! How frigging cool is that? And this one isn't big enough to take a wrist off either if she gets out!
Oh, and Len, she took food into her fitting to eat.....guess it was happening more than I knew!
jeff