The Banana Slug: Southwest Washington's Most Underrated Neighbor

WASHOUGAL — Every so often this paper profiles a local resident of long standing. Today: Ariolimax columbianus, the Pacific banana slug — six inches of unhurried yellow purpose, named, as the Latin discloses, for this river. The slug is, taxonomically, ours. The ‘Couve rarely claims it. This desk hereby does.

The résumé

The banana slug is among the largest slugs on Earth, a distinction the region holds quietly, the way it holds most of its distinctions. It is a decomposer: it eats the forest floor’s leavings — leaves, spores, the fallen and the finished — and returns them to soil. Every fern gully from Salmon Creek to the Cape Horn trail runs in part on slug labor. It is, in the strict economic sense, the only resident doing infrastructure work on schedule, a bar the region has set carefully.

The lifestyle

The slug travels at speeds measured in feet per hour, secreting a mucus so effective that researchers study it for medical adhesives. It has no shell, no armor, no exit strategy — only moisture requirements and resolve. In Junuary, while residents complain of the gray, the slug is at its best. It does not experience the gray as weather. It experiences it as hospitality.

The character reference

This newsroom’s editorial values — patience, dampness, an unhurried gait, a refusal to be rushed by parties waving schedules — are, this desk realizes upon writing them down, a slug’s values. The Editor-in-Chief, asked whether the resemblance was intentional, declined to comment, citing an ongoing situation in the watershed. The slug, reached on a trail near Washougal, also declined, over several hours.

Field etiquette

• Step over, not on. The forest’s compost department is understaffed as it is.
• Do not salt. This desk should not have to print that, and notes, from the search data, that it does.
• The licking rumor — that banana slug slime numbs the tongue — is, regrettably, well documented among the region’s youth. The slug did not consent to being a rite of passage. Neither did the tongue.

Frequently asked questions

Are banana slugs native to Washington State?

Deeply. Columbianus means the Columbia region; the slug was here before the nickname, before the bridge, before the paper. Local seniority runs: river, mountain, slug, Sasquatch, everyone else.

What eats a banana slug?

Garter snakes, ducks, raccoons, and the occasional unlucky dog — the mucus discourages most others. The slug’s primary defense is being more patient than its problems, a strategy this paper has editorialized in favor of at length.