Less filling, tastes great!
This is what came to me: *There was something in my beer that night…
*
[hijack]Goddammit, I hate it when people screw up this joke. The Irishman picks the fly out of his beer, and continues to drink from the glass- because the Irish are notorious drunks. The Scotsman is the one who yells “Spit it out, ye thievin’ bastard!”, because the Scottish are notorious drunks, but also notoriously cheap, so he wants that bit of beer back.[/hijack]
Fernando the slug.
He wasn’t just a bug
He offered a bit of protein
He was silent & unseen
He took a little swim
And you nearly swallowed him…
All these histrionics over a slug-bug in a beer? Some folks just don’t get outdoors often enough.
Technically, it was histrionics over a slug in my mouth when I expected just crip, refreshing, ice-cold smooth beer.
Sorry to be a downer but it can be quite serious.
I have eaten freeze-dried caterpillars, canned grasshoppers, baby bees in honey and chocolate-covered ants. Nothing bothers me.
The difference being that you did so by choice. I’m assuming none of those were in your beer surprise.
Takeaway lesson: Even the slugs in Australia can be deadly.
You wouldn’t do well on survivor.
Ooooh, is it not cute? Much smaller than I imagined by the preceding posts and rather dull in colour, but nice and glossy. If it ever moves again could you make a GIF?
I had a similar incident with a roach in my coffee.
“Hold my beer …”
“Um, no thanks.”
There’s no scale on your picture. How many millimeters (or inches) do you estimate as its length? Also was it more of a flat or rounded shape? Also where do you live, as a general geographic region?
My guess is that you found a deroceras laeve, or marsh slug. Deroceras laeve can be grey to yellow to brown and is found in the Americas, Europe, Asia, and New Zealand (widely prevalent in N. America and Europe). At rest they can be extremely short, around 1cm length, although they might extend twice that length or more. The mantle is unusually large, about half of body length (that bulge in the picture). Deroceras laeve also has the distinction of being the only known terrestrial slug that deliberately goes under water and can survive under water for days. It is most active during late spring and early summer.
For more information, see the deroceras laeve’s entries on the websites of the University of Florida and the University of Göttingen.
~Max
It was about an inch, inch and a half maybe? And I’m in NW Arkansas. Thanks for info!
Sounds like Deroceras laeve to me. I couldn’t find any harmful effects unless you actually ingested the thing (very rarely the Canadian variety carry a parasite which is not known to affect humans), so you should be fine.
~Max
I just thought he coulda squirted something in your mouth. Gah!
(Excuse me while I go barf)
Maybe it was Robin Leech, and I don’t know WHY.