gross and grossest

Blame The Wife for this particular post. She dared me with a list of topics - and this was one of them. So, you know, if you get totally grossed out, it's all her fault.

I don't think of myself as a particularly queasy person. There are some odd things that kinda gross me out (sometimes beyond reason): like MILK, or the word SQUAT (I think it’s one of the grossest words in the English language), or when Fergus or Phoebe yak up the precious spoonful of wet food we give them every night (how does it INCREASE in GIRTH and SIZE by, like, 14 TIMES???). Vomit, in general, isn’t one of my more favorite substances. And there’s this condition called a Pilonidal Abscess/Cyst/Sinus that I think is totally foul, but also STRANGELY FASCINATING (seriously, don't click the link above unless you can read the following phrase without throwing up in your mouth: basically an ingrown hair that turns into a giant sebaceous cyst inside a sinus cavity near your tailbone). It's one of those It-Can’t-Possibly-Be-True-But-It-Is things. And, there’s a support organization for it.

But when I actually think of the nastiest, grossest thing I've ever personally encountered, there is no question in my mind that it’s this thing that happened this summer. See, I wrote about it a little in my very early entries, but since then, I’ve been informed by Chip that I got some of the basic details wrong. So, for your reading pleasure, I present to you: THE WORLD ACCORDING TO WHIMSY – AND THE GROSSEST THING THAT HAS EVER GROSSED. AND IT WAS GROSSLY GROSS ON WHIMSY’S HOUSE.

The basics are there: it was an early fall/late summer evening. I was coming home after a nice evening out with Angela. We have a door from our garage into the house, so normally we don’t do a lot of coming & going through our front entryway. But on this particular night, Angela drove – so I had to enter the house through the front. Our porch light had burned out (AND IT STILL IS, YES, THIS IS A HINT), so it was a bit dark leading up to the porch. In the light of the entryway window I could see …something… on the wall by the front door. It was round. It was about 4 inches in diameter. It was dark brownish-black. It was a little bit, um, shiny. It was pulsating. And you’d think at this point I’d be RUNNING IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION – but I needed to get inside the house! To pee! So I walked closer. And made the most girly screechy noise as I rushed past the seething, pulsing, slimy mass. At first I thought it was a snake or other some other um, serpent. But as I shimmied past (making the high-pitched squeaky noise) I realized it was actually TWO OF THE LARGEST SLUGS I’D EVER SEEN – MAKING WITH THE HANKY-PANKY ON THE SIDE OF OUR HOUSE. It was surreal. And tremendously disgusting. So of course I slammed the door shut behind me and started screaming for Chip to come downstairs to see the show. I was all, YOU HAVE TO COME DOWN HERE RIGHT THIS MINUTE AND BRING A SHOTGUN EVEN THOUGH WE DON’T OWN A SHOTGUN. SO BRING SOMETHING LETHAL. TO SLUGS.

When I had first glimpsed the young slug lovers (shiver), they were sort of swirled together, in one poo-like cinnamon roll formation. But in the minutes it took me to get Chip downstairs, and for both of us to come creeping out the front door – the slugs had done something else. Their woopie session had escalated into… some kind of slug acrobatics that had their entwined bodies jutted OUT from the house, with a drippy whitish something or other covering them both. At this point, both of us unable to communicate in anything beyond ALL CAPS, ALL THE TIME, Chip goes, YOU HAVE TO GET THE CAMERA! THIS IS UNBELIEVEABLE! AND SO GROSS! And I’m all, I’M RUNNING! WHERE IS IT! HERE IT IS! And Chip’s all, HURRY! HURRY! THEY’RE DOING SOMETHING ELSE! And I’m all, I’M COMING!

By the time I had the camera on & ready to go - the slug nookie had, um, sort of come to its excited climax and there was this. (Seriously, don’t go to the link if you can’t handle having the image of SLUG INTERCOURSE BURNED INTO YOUR BRAIN – FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. The contents of the whitish goo? Slug BABIES, of course. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of them.

The end.

Okay - not really the end. The end was when Chip threw 30 bajillion glasses of water at the entire mess, trying to wash it off the HOUSE and to get the new generation of slugs into our neighbor’s yard. Because it was late. And they wouldn’t be the wiser. And I wasn’t of the mind to KILL them exactly, as they’d just come into existence. (Can you imagine if we’d salted the little creeps? It could be like the whale in Hitchhiker’s Guide, all “Wow! We’ve just been cinnamon-rolled into existence! We have thousands of slug brothers & sisters! We are united in an opaque viscous fluid! We are happily entwined! Hey- what’s that? It’s a white crunchy substance! It’s a new substance that is now – AHHHHHHH BOILING OUR VERY FLESH INTO OBLIVION! GOODBYE CRUEL WORLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”)

Now it's really the end. (I did bring the picture to work the next day and totally showed it to some people. Who still remember it. Because yes, it is also burned into their temporal lobes. As it will now be burned into yours.)