The first time my kids saw a banana slug, they were freaking out. They were stamping their feet and screaming in the corner of the yard at the edge of the woods.
"Come quick, Mom! You gotta see this!"
"Okay, okay. I'm coming."
"Hurry, Mom! It's getting away!"
My husband and I were like, Wow. We moved here just in time.
In Cupertino, our old Silicon Valley home, one day we saw a raccoon squished in the road. Two turkey vultures were swooping around it. It was on a pretty busy street in a residential neighborhood. ("Busy street" and "residential neighborhood" should not belong together.) One turkey vulture had landed on the carcass. As I drove around the corner and saw it, I was amazed at the enormity of it. Giant black wings. Hunched neck. Just like an ancient, roadkill-eating demon. It flew off when I drove near. So I circled the block and parked the car near the raccoon. I had to park half a block away to find a bit of shade that would allow us to sit there, waiting for the vultures to return.
"Why are we sitting here, Mom?" whined the kids. "I thought we were going to Target."
"We are witnessing the wonders of nature, kids."
Nature. Yeah, right. I can't say that this was the time when I realized that Silicon Valley could not afford my kids the kind of life I wanted to give them. This was actually the forty-seventh millionth time.
"Why is that raccoon in the road, Mom?"
"It's dead," I said.
"Maybe a car hit it," said my seven-year-old son.
"Maybe it just got dead," said my four-year-old daughter.
We waited about twenty minutes. Many other cars continually zoomed past as the vultures circled and circled above the houses. They didn't land again.
The cool thing about banana slugs is that they can't get away. "Hurry, Mom! It's getting away!" is not something my kids have to worry about. They are no longer ignorant of its powers of locomotion. And there are plenty of them to observe. They, too, are animals that take care of organic material. Could they be the vultures of the forest floor?
They can't get away, which make them the perfect introductory animal. We see them in the garden, in the woods, on the porch steps, in the bushes, and even on the compost bin in the mornings, slurping their way around its conical shape, stretched out to their full length, sagging in the middle into a sloppy C shape. Into a banana shape.
My husband and I plan to get them into backpacking shape so we can take them on long trips in the Olympic National Park, an hour away. It's the most beautiful place I've ever seen, after Lake Superior. A month ago, we took the kids on a two mile hike in the Elwha River Valley. They complained pretty much the whole time. I tried to get them to sing boy scout songs with limited success. But just a few days ago, we took them on a five mile hike and they loved it! We were on the Dungeness Spit. And now we are highly encouraged.
They like the beach, the tide pools, the otters we see offshore. They like blackberry picking. Soon, they will like sleeping on the ground under the stars.
Kids, we are witnessing the wonders of nature.
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