10 - Friday, July 31, 1992 — North Shore News

Unique look at flora
and fauna fascinates

Peggy
Trendell-Whittaker

ECOINFO
PEOPLE WISHING to live
the ‘“‘green’’ life are always

being encouraged to go au
naturel.

Don't worry about the blem-
ishes on organic fruit. Use
washable cotton diapers instead of
disposables. Atr-polluting
hairspray, or makeup tested on
animals? Forget it, go without.

Gradually, we're being gently
nudged to not see the natural state
of fruit, A new book now con-
tinues the task of trying to make
us be friends with nature and
some of its elements that we have
to date considered less than ap-
pealing.

Whitecap Books of North Van-
couver has recently published Des
Kennedy's Living Things We Love
to Hate: Facts, Fantasies and
Fallacies.

From the amount of press at-
tention the work has received,
people are indeed fascinated by
the histories, habits and sex tives
of such common plants and
creatures as raccoons, slugs, starl-
ings, wasps and dandelions.

Both the author and David
Suzuki, who wrote a foreword to
the book, want to combat human
fear and hatred of certain species,
so that we in our ignorance do not
start meddling with the balance of
nature by waging war on creatures
that we have an unfounded dislike
for.

Looking through the list of
species towards which we are sup-

_ posed to rehabilitate our attitude,
I focused on slugs and spiders and
decided that there is where 1!
needed to do the most work.

While slugs don’t give me the
instant sense of panic that spiders
do, ever since I was four and
stepped on a slug in my bare feet
T’ve kept a healthy distance.

I come by my attitude honestly.
My late grandfather, a well-
beloved and generally gentle An-
glican archdeacon, kept a small
black notebook in which he fien-
dishly tallied the number of slug
kills he’d racked up in his garden
that day.

His all-time record, according
to his meticulously maintained
journal that spanned years, was

well over 100 slugs dispatched in
one day,

Like my = grandfather, author
Des Kennedy became obsessed
with killing the slugs in his Den-
man Island garden.

To his chagrin and mortifica-
tion, however, he discovered that
the huge, infamous ‘B.C.
Banana’’ slugs on which he'd been
venting his wrath are actually far
less destructive than much smaller
species of slugs introduced from
Europe that were actually the ones

- chomping his spinach feaves and

escaping undetected.

OK, so J felt sorry for the un-
justly executed banana slugs. But
I wasn’t yet prepared to welcome
them fully into my heart. | read
on and discovered the following:
@eThe B.C. ‘‘bananas’’
(Ariolimax Columbianus) come in
a variety of colors, can grow up
to 30 cm (12 in.) long and often
live four to five years.

@ Some slug species are carnivo-
rous, eating earthworms and
sometimes even each other.

@ Slug slime comes in different
forms and is variously used to
help the slug move, mate, or fight
off marauders,

@ Even though slugs are her-
maphrodites, with both male and
female sex organs, anc? can fertil-
ize their own eggs, copulition ts
common and rife with drama.

One species, Linsax maximus,
initiates courthiy by biting a
fellow slug. The victim takes off,
leaving the aggressor following its
slime trail in hot pursuit.

After several metres of this ac-
tion-packed chase, the slugs climb
a plant, wrap themselves around
each other, and fling themselves
off the plant, landing in mid-air
and suspended by a mucus rope.

So dangling, they exchange
sperm and then either go their
separate ways or continue biting
each other.

in some cases, the aggression is
such that one slug will chew the
other’s penis off, rendering it fe-
male-only for life.

1 told you these guys were
dramatic.

How do I feel about slugs now?
Well, | promise to look at them
with more respect, if not yet
outright affection.

1 discovered some equally novel
facts about my arachnid arch-
enemies. Of course, we’re lucky;
even our hairiest basement-
dwellers are nothing compared
with other specimens you'll find
around the globe.

The Theraphosid spider of
Brazil has a body of 10 cm (4 in.)
long and legs that can spread 30
cm (12 in.). One heid captive
sucked dry two large frogs and
two highly venomous snakes in
the space of four days.

There’s also a tropical spider
that weaves a web two metres in
diameter and suspends it on six-
metre (19.6 feet) guy wires.

[also found that:

@ There are 30,000 species of
spider, living from the desert heat
to polar cold.

Band makes N. Shore debut

BLUES-ROCKERS the
Last Wild Sons will be
making their North Shore
debut this weekend at the
Raven Pub.

The up-and-coming five-man
original Vancouver band, which
mixes contemporary blues with

rockabilly, has just released its
debut alubum, The Heart of the
Workin’ Man,

The 18-song recording features
new drummer, Billy Rogers, who
has played with the Ramones and
the late Johnny Thunders.

The band’s North Shore gig is
scheduled for tonight and Satur-
day, Aug. I.

pak

\-

FAST

@ Some spiders can change color
like chameleons.

@ Their silk is pure protein and
has a greater tensile strength than
steel,

@ Some spiders can eat an old
web and spin new silk out of it in
30 minutes.

Do these sound like the sort of
things you want to know about
the flies, rats, wasps, deer and
alder trees in your neighborhood?

If so, you won't be disap-
pointed with Kennedy’s unfailing-
ly unique look at such local flora
and fauna. It's available in local
bookstores.

1.C.B.C,

<7

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