5 Slugs That, In Retrospect, We Sort Of Whipped Ourselves Into A Frenzy Over

When we first had the idea for this list, we were going wild for all the slugs we found—but now that we’ve had some distance from it, we can see that they’re okay at best. Here are five slugs that, in retrospect, we sort of whipped ourselves into a frenzy over.

So, we know that this isn’t exactly an impressive start to the list, but you’ve got to understand that last week we were seeing this slug through totally different eyes. Everything about it was like magic to us—its pointed tentacles, its curved shape, its brown coloration. It blew us away. This whole blurb was going to be about how looking at slug photos is the only surefire way to lift your mood and make you realize how beautiful the world can be. But now looking at it on a computer, we realize this one’s pretty lame. It’s kind of like a big worm—definitely nothing to write home about.

We spent an hour debating whether the caption for this photo should be, “This slug will change your life,” or, “This amazing slug will blow your mind,” ultimately agreeing that we would use both. Sort of embarrassing to think about that now considering how average it looks. There’s no denying that we saw something in this slug, but it doesn’t come across in the cold light of day. Oh well.

It’s difficult to articulate what it was about this slug crawling across some rocks that seemed so extraordinary to us mere days ago. All we know is that it had us absolutely stoked. The energy was electric—we all stayed at the office till after eight looking up thousands of slug pictures and winnowing them down to our favorites. We were going to call the list “5 Absolutely Unbelievable Slugs You Have To See Before You Die.” Something about that day, man. Whatever it was we were feeling about these slugs then, we just don’t feel it anymore.

All things considered, this slug is a bit more interesting than the others. It’s lifting its head up in a cool little pose, which none of the rest of the slugs are doing, so you can’t totally blame us for getting excited. Still, to call it anything besides “sort of neat” is an oversell.

Yeah, we know you don’t wish you were this slug, but last week we had our graphics department drop everything else they were working on to mock this up, and now we’re kind of stuck with it. Sorry. We’ll try not to get so worked up next time.