Slug or snake? It was getting dark when we saw it. It was moving at a snail’s pace, though that was enough to make the picture blurry at the creature’s tail. It was about 4″ (10 cm) long. The front end looks the same as Arion lusitanicus, the so-called Iberian slug that reached Norway in 1988 but then took ten years to reach our garden from the other side of the lake (they went the pretty way, along the shore, not through the middle). The back end is more like the hoggorm, or adder, that has a black-and-khaki zigzag pattern.
Slugs are supposed to be very destructive, but I haven’t ever seen any damage around here that wasn’t caused by either humans (litter) or cows (they like knocking over our garbage cans and going through the contents). In Norway, Arion lusitanicus is also called the drepersnegl or mordersnegl, the killer- or murderer slug. I feel quite confident I could take one on. Snegl is used in Norway to cover both slugs and snails. We have tons of snails too, and they never seem to eat a thing. Either they’re all anorexic or it’s a myth that gastropods gobble up people’s gardens.
A Bad Guide 
In Dutch slak covers snails and slugs. I can get Boris to say “snail”, but he doesn’t hear the difference between “slak” and “slug” and then things get increasingly confused. Snails are pretty much his specialist subject, as luck would have it, so it is my destiny to try and fix this lacuna in his vocabulary.
Meanwhile, they eat our violas (pansies?) and they’ve had a go at the pumpkins too. And there are always snails in the apple tree if it’s rained, but they may just climb it for the view.
What an odd creature!! Are you sure it’s not an ET trying to conquer your garden??
“Either they’re all anorexic or it’s a myth that gastropods gobble up people’s gardens.”
LOL! I loved your ending line!
Ah, and it’s funny I also talk about a snail today… :-)
It’s clearly an unholy slug/snake hybrid that will end life as we know it.
I feel quite confident I could take one on.
That’s what everybody thinks until they’re upon you, and then it’s too late.
I feel quite confident I could take one on.
If only they only came in ones…
« Lusitanicus ».
Lusitanicus it is. Thank you, Jesus. How did you know that was wrong?
I’m not sure but I remember you have spoken with me about the word « lusitanisme ». Moreover I live in Badajoz (Spain) next to Portugal (3 km approx.)
I know the Arion vulgaris although I didn’t know that scientific name. For us it’s “una babosa”; “baba” = slime, saliva.
“Snegl and snegl and puppy dogs’ tails”:
it lacks a certain esprit.
I only know it from the Peninsular War, but Badajoz looks pretty great in photographs. Can everyone speak Portuguese? Do you go to Portugal very often? When I lived in the United States, we once spent an evening in Windsor, Ontario, at a Chinese restaurant. That’s the only time I’ve ever been to Canada. Everyone spoke Chinese.
In Norway we normally say Gastropods & puppy dogs’ tails.
I can get Boris to say “snail”, but he doesn’t hear the difference between “slak” and “slug” and then things get increasingly confused. Snails are pretty much his specialist subject, as luck would have it, so it is my destiny to try and fix this lacuna in his vocabulary.
What is he, three? He ought really to be calling them gastropods by now.
snips and snails and puppy dogs’ tails
what are snips?
I once annoyed myself and a shopkeeper in Germany by saying Schnecke when I meant <Schlange (German word for snail unfortunately similar to English word “snake”).
sorry, html typo
Schlange
You mean you said “I’d like to buy a snail” when you meant “I’d like to buy a snake”? Okay.
In Norway slange means both “snake” and “garden hose”. I’m not sure if it’s the same in German.
<Schlange is more of a pictogram.
In Norwegian, a snekke (pronounced like in German) is one of these (a snekker is a carpenter).
snips and snails and puppy dogs’ tails
what are snips?
Mostly from Wikipedia:
“Snips” is (it seems) the US version. The British one, based on Robert Southey’s version, says “slugs”. Southey (friend of Coleridge & Wordsworth in Keswick and Poet Laureate) was also the author of the Three Bears (at least, the first to write it down). Snips probably means snippets, though it might have been “Snips of snails”.
“Snips and snails,etc.” The correct quotation is: “snakes and snails and puppy dogs tails”. I might add that it goes on to say : “that’s what little boys are made of” , while, on the contrary little girls are made of ” sugar and spice and everything nice,”
I’m so glad I asked. According to Wiki the oldest known version has “snigs and snails”, snigs being eels.
You mean you said “I’d like to buy a snail”
There was a little more to it than that.
That is a remarkable creature you photographed there, AJP – so much so I was wondering if “photographed” was the right verb, or whether I should have used “photoshopped” instead. :)
Either way, it makes me quite pleased to live in a snakefree zone.
“Slugs are supposed to be very destructive, but I haven’t ever seen any damage around here … We have tons of snails too, and they never seem to eat a thing. Either they’re all anorexic or it’s a myth that gastropods gobble up people’s gardens.”
I’ve heard of a Diet of Worms but never of a snail or slug that doesn’t eat a thing. The ones here are voracious. They come out in armies particularly on wet nights, and nothing small and growing is safe.
Perhaps that upon which they dine chez vous is not noticed by you because they have already eaten it?
In Norway slange means both “snake” and “garden hose”. I’m not sure if it’s the same in German.
Garden hose in modern times is [Wasser]schlauch. In Elizebethan times, Gärtenhose was a kind of protective trouser worn by gardeners when slugging it out with the pansies.
Elizabethan.
Dammit, Gartenhose.
You can stand in a Schlange here, as well as on one. Do I correctly remember that “snake” is a British English term for that two-by-two procession of schoolchildren ?
snekke (pronounced like in German)
The best kind of Schnecke (snail) here has raisins in and is covered with icing.
>A.J.Crown 11 June at 11:33 pm
Eureka !
• A.J.P. Crown // 26 février 2010 à 15:55
“Jesus, […] Lusitanism is a very, very good word, and I’m going to use it as often as possible from now on.” (“Pêcheurs & tourists” in Martian Spoken Here.)
The last time I went to Portugal:
http://www.portalalentejano.com/?p=15576
As for speaking Portuguese, a little.
“snake” is a British English term for that two-by-two procession of schoolchildren ?
Ha, ha, that’s a good one, Grumbly. No, it’s “crocodile”.
Gärtenhose was a kind of protective trouser worn by gardeners when slugging it out with the pansies.
German also has tote Hose, or dead trousers, a phrase I like a lot, which refers (presumably) to (a scarcity of) trouser snakes.
I’ve heard of a Diet of Worms
Actually, I just noticed that Schnecke can mean worm, in German, as well as slug & snail. According to Wiktionary, in old High German snecco is “akin” to the old English for snake, snaca (makes you think twice about eating a snack), which is itself cognate with Middle Low German snake, and Old Norse snákr and snókr.
Perhaps that upon which they dine chez vous is not noticed by you because they have already eaten it?
That’s a good point. It certainly isn’t missed, though. They are welcome to it.
Mind you, you can see a crocodile of children snaking across a road.
Jesús, thank you for that detective work. My memory isn’t good for anything useful like that. Bacalhau is a VERY popular dish in Norway.
The article says
But the title is ambiguous, possibly without intent, but one can’t be sure with the Hosen. Certain German phrases can trip up the tourist:
Es ist alles eins. Mach was du willst.
It’s all one / it’s all the same [to me]. Do what you want.
Es ist alle, [z.B. Das Bier ist alle.]
It’s finished, all gone [as in “There’s no more beer”]
Decades ago I was particularly annoyed at es ist alle. Now, I can’t remember what the fuss was.
By the way, Siegfried Polke died this week aged 69.
Nongrumbly Stu, I swear the slug-snake isn’t photoshopped — though a photoshopped slug-snake thing is a good idea, and I might try constructing it one day.
Bacalhau is a VERY popular dish in Norway.
The “VERY” seems to imply that you don’t like it very much.
The metaphor used in Spain for talking about the cyclists’ line in a cycle race is “serpiente multicolor” (multicolored snake).
Apart from KKK, the most dangerous procession is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_Processionary
>A.J.Crown
When I was a child (and even now) in somewhere of Extremadura, if you said “pescado” (fish) everybody understood “bacalao” (from Norway, of course). It was nearly the only fish we ate. Things were different then, before F (fridge. LOL)
Es ist alle sounds to me like “that’s all”. No big deal, as you say.
Too bad about Sigmar Polke. I see he died in Köln.
I just noticed that Schnecke can mean worm, in German
Where did you get that idea ? Your link says: “A screw or worm thread.” I don’t see you trying to make a wooden box held together by worms.
Polke died in Cologne because he lived here.
The “VERY” seems to imply that you don’t like it very much.
Not at all. I love it. Have you ever tried lutefisk? That’s really an acquired taste, but bacalhau is easy to like.
I think I’ll leave lutefisk until I visit Norway some time:
Where did you get that idea ? Your link says: “A screw or worm thread.”
No, I got it from google translate. Not a reliable source for one-word translations. My German dictionary is in the other building and it’s raining.
Jesús, thank you for that Pine Processionary. Another really extraordinary creature. Here are some more pictures.
Extremadura
I’m really getting hooked. I may move there.
I think whoever chose the epithet “processionary” for these animals is equally extraordinary, and should be awarded a posthumous prize for felicity of expression.
>A.J.Crown
I think the next month I’ll go there to see a play (the Iliad). This morning my wife has been to buy the tickets.
Those roman theaters in Spain and France are a favorite backdrop for French and German directors of art films, i.e. ones about contemporary wigged-out intellectual stuff. Such films are often on offer on arte.
This morning my wife has been to buy the tickets.
Lucky you. Is it going to be in Spanish? English has different translations of the Iliad, some very colloquial, some so old that the Greek is almost easier to understand.
Roman theaters in Spain and France are a favorite backdrop for French and German directors of art films
I didn’t know that. But it’s been going on for quite a while in Italy too.
I posted sin leer el comentario de Jesús. Of course a play entitled “The Iliad” is very likely not the kind of thing I was talking about. A Roman theater will do if a Greek one is not available, although I couldn’t tell the difference. Recently, perhaps during the tv coverage of the Cannes festival, I saw excerpts from a newish film that was built around sequences of actors and chorus declaiming in an amphitheater. Can’t remember what the film title was.
But the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza is a Renaissance theater.
Yes, it’s by Palladio. I was thinking of the similarity from the directors’ point of view.
There are lots of differences between a Greek and a Roman amphitheatre and I had to learn them all, as it happens, for my acoustics class in architecture school. The only one I can remember nowadays is that a Greek amphitheatre was built into the hillside whereas a Roman one was built up on a series of brick arches. Oh, also the Roman ones had (appropriately enough) the vomitorium.
A Roman theater will do if a Greek one is not available, although I couldn’t tell the difference.
Sloterdijk has written a good deal about the differences between cultures that have open spectacles (Greek stadia) and closed ones (Roman arenas).
If you keep giving me these Sloterdijk trailers, knowing how bad the translations are, I can see I’m going to have to try and read him in German*.
* Yeah, right. It’s not gonna happen. (AJP’s Mother.)
vomitorium
How interesting, I didn’t know that meaning. Just imagine: in the old Colosseum, somebody wanting to warn the spectators of danger would not cry “Fire !”, but “Puke !”.
Ha, ha, ha.
This article on processionary caterpillars is worth reading for the vivid personal history at the end (and also worth editing, but only by one who knows, for example, whether “firth” is a typo for “fifth” or “fourth” — presumably not “first”).
Caterpillars, snails, slugs, all with their adorable aspects.
Where one considers drawing the line is with
these
and
these
and
these.
:-0 I see my mum commenting in this long thread…. Funny.
ughhhhh, Tom, ugghhhh & uggghhh!!!
I think we’ve had this conversation on Hat’s blog before, never ever blindly trust Google translate.
The trouble with “Es ist alle” or “Alles alle” is that that’s usually the answer when you really want to buy something – food, a particular beverage, the new kind of sandals that was advertised in a magazine – and they tell you the’ve run out, so it’s bound to put you in a bad mood.
A Schnecke is my favourite kind of breakfast pastry – know here in Belgium as a “couque suisse ronde” for some obscure reason.
Ha, ha. Very expressive, J.
I’m not crazy about “the author’s foot”.
processionary caterpillars
= les chenilles processionnaires
I think these must have been named by the entomologist Fabre who studied them – he is famous for having made them walk in a circle by making the first in line join up to the last one – they just kept circling until some of them died. The word “procession” would be very familiar to a person from a country with a Catholic majority.
The English Wikipedia article on the pine processionary ( a particularly dangerous pest) appears to have been written by a person of Romance background (I thought French, but probably Spanish as the author mentions moving to Mallorca). There are different French WiPe articles for different subspecies, which indicate the “fifth” stage as the last larval stage before metamorphosis into a moth.
A Schnecke is my favourite kind of breakfast pastry
That’s right, I’d forgotten that sort of schnecke. But if a kindly-looking German offers you Apfelschnecken, don’t be fooled — unless you’re in Mexico and even then, well…
he is famous for having made them walk in a circle by making the first in line join up to the last one – they just kept circling
That’s interesting, I remember my uncle telling us that story when I was a child. Jean-Henri Farbe.
Empty, that article is a real challenge for Mighty Mouse, The Copyeditor. It gives the impression that the caterpillars are displaced persons:
I thought of Mighty Mouse because I recently saw the Dreamcatcher film again on tv:
The film is silly and clichéd in many ways, but it moves me every time I see it. Does that mean I’m silly and clichéd ? Probably. I just this instant discovered that it is based on a novel of the same name by Stephen King – which is not surprising.
That’s right, I’d forgotten that sort of schnecke.
What do you mean, forgotten ? I devoted an entire comment to it supra. <* fumes *>
Goodness, Grumbly. That’s quite worrying. I think it’s the pressure. Getting more than ten comments a day because Language is on holiday — now I see what it’s like being Language Hat.
Now I have to vacuum the house. I bet Language doesn’t have to vacuum the house, Amazon just buys him a new house.
Remember Quentin Crisp’s discovery that after four years the dust doesn’t get any thicker. The layer reaches a point of dynamic equilibrium.
(scarcity of) trouser snakes
Unlikely. Perhaps you are not familiar with the vulgar expression “snake pussy”, briefly popular years ago among Texas university students of a certain persuasion.
It is certainly the case that I didn’t know the expression “trouser snake” until just before writing this-here comment.
>A.J.Crown
According to my Latin dictionary the name is “vomitoria” so it’s plural; like that it’s in Mérida. The stands are “cavea ima, media et summa” and the first place is “orchestra”, reserved for the jet set (senators, etc.)
I don’t know how the Romans coped, but it’s certainly vomitorium in English. As an architect I would say, for example, “I’ve put 10 seats directly over this vomitorium on the left”. “Over this (one of the) vomitoria” would just sound weird. However, I believe that in England now they’re known as “voms”.
“ughhhhh, Tom, ugghhhh & uggghhh!!!”
Julia, if you said that to a slug it would smile modestly and perhaps blush, thinking you were speaking of it (and simply dropping your sl’s, perhaps a common affectation among those who address slugs named Tom).
Whereas if you said that to a large dripping wet China leech, well, I wouldn’t want to be responsible for the consequences.
BTW, speaking of large dripping wet slimy things in dubious embraces, did you happen to see the double Big Hug proffered upon Lio Messi just now by Diego Maradona?
Maradona may have thought that in the insane atmosphere created by all those continuously honking horns, anything goes.
Thinking (no, not thinking, they make that impossible: free-associating, more like) about those horns made me wonder whether snails and slugs might possess a delicate musical sensibility, and if so, whether perhaps the mass honking of the vuvuzelas could be a garden pest eviction project gone berserk?
Oops, it’s vuvuzela — no third “u”, though I find myself, in my desire to escape them, putting one in there in my mind, perhaps because of the association with Venezuela (slugs, I understand, can’t be extradited from Venezuela).
Well, looking again, I see I only gave them two. I call it “see”, though with my eyesight I should say “guess”.
Some sleep I think might well be a better idea at this point than England/USA to the tune of a root canal performed in a traffic jam in a tunnel.
>A.J.Crown
Also this brigde, in Extremadura, is very impressionant, where you can read the inscription “…ponte perpetui mansurum in saecula mundi…” Yes, eternal at least until now. Even the reservoir of water was built upstream keeping the bridge there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alc%C3%A1ntara_Bridge
Yesterday I drove over it two times.
Heh, I like this bit:
Beginning date of construction 104
Completion date 106
A beautiful piece of work. I like the arch over the roadway, in the middle, and the gatehouse at the end. It has a complex layout. There’s what looks like a roadway perpendicular to the bridge, with a crenulated grassy embankment and a tunnel underneath it. I guess the embankment was a fortification to stop enemy soldiers using the river to cross over.
For me, until now, Alcántara (but in English Alcantára) has only been another name for ultrasuede (it meant only this).
made me wonder whether snails and slugs might possess a delicate musical sensibility
Yes, I think so too. You really have to creep up quietly if you don’t want the Venezuelans on their heads to disappear.
>A.J.Crown
Two years only. The union would be on strike!
On video:
P.S. I didn’t know this material.
Fantastic. (By the way, Jesús, I think you may be a similar kind of professor of science as dearieme, who also comments here. It’s all too technical for me to be sure).
>A.J.P.Crown
Who gave you a tip-off? (LOL)
Thank you, but professor is too much for me.
At the moment I’m a student who wants to pass an English oral exam next Monday.
Yes, Tom, I realize after writing those expressions that they sound like “slug”. Maybe that name it’s an onomatopoeia, that copies not the sound the beast makes, but the person who sees it… (no sé si mi inglés básico permite entender la tontería que quiero decir…)
And, no, we didn’t watch the football match (perhaps we’re one of the few Argentine families that didn’t…)
Ah, there must be another Jesús in Extremadura. Well, never mind, it’s still a good video and you should certainly do very well in your exam. Tell them we said so!
Julia, your uggghhhs are a masterpiece of English. It’s perfect, I wish I’d written it.
>A. J .P. Crown
Thank you. Your words give me encouragement. Anyway, I get myself into a real mess at my age.
As regards your suggestion, if my teacher knew that she’d turn off my laptop.
the arch over the roadway, in the middle
That is a military construction to hold back enemies trying to cross the bridge. I know such a thing from the novel The Bridge Over the Drina by Ivo Andric(´ over the c). There, in the first half of the 19th century, the Turks built one hastily out of wood. When anyone tried to cross the bridge who appeared suspicious to the Turks, they would hang him, or behead him and impale the head as an object-lession for the general public. When the bridge began to be built in the early 16th century, there was an impalement of more than a head. Hat recently mentioned his memory of that horrific section of the novel, near the beginning.
Zoran, a Serb in my current project lent me the novel. It’s slow going and I haven’t finished it, because I find it full of codgery lyricism and in-your-face extended allegory: The Bridge as slowly accomplished, but enduring achievement of Law’n’Order in order to connect the peoples of the earth, so that they can trade apples for oranges in peace. Zoran says he likes it because it depicts terrible things in a perfectly matter-of-fact way, unlike most Balkan historical novel that he’s read. I’m sure that if I had his cultural backgound I wouldn’t be so sniffy about the novel. In fact, after checking it to make sure the things I just wrote above are correct, I think my dismissal of it is probably so dumb-ass as not to be worth repeating.
In this photo of Andric and the bridge – I suppose from the 1940’s or 50’s – you can see the “gate” in the middle: a rather tall masonry construction with an inscription on it. This is where the novel’s wooden tower was built.
Correction: the kapija or “gate” is the entire middle section of the bridge, which is widened. On one side of this is a kind of seating area. On the other side is the 2-meter high support for the inscription.
“Bring the house down”, “the threshold of a new era”, “to buttress an argument”, “she became unhinged”, “paper the cracks over”, “freemason”, “jerrybuilt”, “build a house upon sand”, “esprit de l’escalier“, “to shout it from the rooftops”, “besser ein Spatz in der Hand als eine Taube auf dem Dach“, “the noise subsided”, “double helix as winding staircase”, “Potemkin village”, “that’s a mere facade”, “a veneer of plausibility”.
Wrong thread, please delete last comment !
please delete last comment !
I thought they were examples of codgery lyricism and in-your-face extended allegory.
If you think that’s lyricism, then your opinion of it is as low as mine !
I can’t abide in-your-face extended allegory.
Thank you for the detour, Grumbly. I didn’t know this was a common bridge feature…I bet it has a name. Language probably knows what it’s called.
Dunno how common it is. I had only a vague idea from the novel, where the wooden construction is described as being not very high. The first time I have ever seen such a construction as on the middle of the Alcántara bridge, is on that bridge.
I suppose you could always build an additional bridge over the top of one of those things, whatever they’re called.
You mean like the double-decker freeways in America?
Yes, except I was thinking of a short, hump-backed bridge just in the middle.
Like a caterpillar hump. Bridge processionaries !
Something in the way of a snail bridge, for brief processions?
In Germany we have frog-migration underpasses. Next, snail flyovers.
I have missed the last bus out of Providence and will not be back at my desk until tomorrow afternoon. Just thought I’d report in. (I’ve been clearing out spam from LH but don’t have the energy to do a post, so I thought I’d let the goats and their acolytes know.)
We miss you, LH, but we are glad to know you are safe.
I have missed the last bus out of Providence
Now, if that isn’t in-your-face extended allegory, I don’t know what is.
Having missed the last bus out of Providence, what is left to do but take a slug by its wet little hand and head out on the Bridge to Nowhere?
Something very odd happened. I wrote a comment about that first bridge, saying that it looks over-structured to carry snails, and it’s gone.
I love the Cloud Forest piece* you wrote that accompanies the Bridge to Nowhere, Tom.
*containing the word “bosky”
I’m back from Providence now (and I must say I was well provided for there, including but not limited to cask-strength Macallan), and I wish to pass on the vital information (gleaned from the one of my hosts who is a slug-loving artist, rather than the other who is a Clarissa-loving editrix) that the creature in question is a banana slug. He magnified the photograph to make sure. He pointed out to me the various charming details that allow one to identify a banana slug, but the combination of my ignorance of such things and my lack of sleep make it impossible for me to recall any of it. But now you know.
Norwegian Wikipedia says that there are no in Norway or Europe. If the slugger is right, then another intrusive species has been spotted. You should notify the University’s Biology department.
… that there are no banana snails in Norway or Europe.
Ariolimax columbianus columbianus
English: Pacific Banana Slug
Norwegian: (drumroll for coinage) Stillehavsbanansnegl
English Wikipedia:
.
You recently told us that two of your neighbours have been studying in Northern California, didn’t you?
Thanks, Language — and thank your very knowledgeable host from me. Following a link on the banana site, I reckon it’s this one, Limax cinereoniger. It says on Wikipedia:
We’re pretty far north, but it’s got to be this one. Can grow up to a foot long! That’s one big slug.
As my daughter pointed out, it’s remarkable to spend one’s spare time writing articles in Wikipedia about slugs. It’s not a great pick-up line, but thank goodness someone was interested enough to take it on.
I think you’re right. The keel along its back is easy to see when you know it’s there. Thank heavens. We didn’t need another snail invasion hysteria.
But my judgment is worthless. I was about to say that I thought I’d seen it once or twice around here, but I wouldn’t trust my memory after Hat told that his friend had identified it as a banana slug. It really should have struck me that the one in your picture isn’t yellow. Since you said the front end looked like the Spanish slug, I thought it was browner than what was clear from the picture.
Today’s slug news.
Essence: The Iberian slug is vaning. The Leopard slug, Limax maximus, hunts it down and bites it to death with its murderous leather tooth.
Vi regner den ikke som skadedyr som iberiasneglen, sier professor Andersen.
I’m not sure I like the sound of it. One of the commenters says it was only imported to Norway in the mid-20th c. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes, eh? Thanks for keeping me up to date with slugs.
Vi regner den ikke som skadedyr som iberiasneglen, sier professor Andersen.
Three reasons, apparently: It’s feeding mainly on debris, it’s reproducing at a much slower rate than the Iberian slug, and (I surmise) since it’s more aggressive towards competitors it keeps its number down.
One of the commenters says it was only imported to Norway in the mid-20th c.
And still we rarely see it. The Iberian slug came in the 80s and was omnipresent by 2000.
Ironic, though, that it’s the more peaceful Iberian slug that’s been dubbed mordersnegl. That came from a mid-90s headline in Dagbladet:
Morder-
sneglene
kommer.
(After memory, I gave up tracking down the original.)
Yes, I thought the same thing.