Banana Slugs

It stopped raining, although it was still very damp. We went for a walk. The air smelled pretty good; like eucalyptus... at first I thought I was looking at a fallen eucalyptus leaf, in fact, and then realized it was a banana slug. The path we were walking on was shaded and cool, and the slugs were making their way across it. We saw several of them. They look kind of gross to me, but I know they're beneficial creatures; they eat the fallen leaves and animal poop and turn it all into soil. Supposedly, they live all along the Pacific Northwest, in the coastal forests, and they're one of the largest slugs in the world. I've seen them in Santa Cruz before, where they were yellow and spotted, and fatter than the greenish ones I saw today. As the sun dropped lower and lower, their slimy trails gleamed...