Raspberries and Slugs

My grandmother lived next door to me while I was growing up, which meant she was also my babysitter, which meant I was indoctrinated into all the things she liked to do, which meant we picked raspberries off of the bushes in between our two houses, which meant we could have a favorite treat of hers, raspberries and cream, which really meant raspberries and cream and some slugs.

You see, my grandmother was fairly indiscriminate about which berries she chose, and she couldn't see all that well, so consequently along with berries we got raspberry slugs that crawled around on the bushes too. I always made sure to pick off my slugs and throw them back in the patch because, and I can't really emphasize this enough, I didn't want to eat slugs. Not even a little.

My grandmother held no such reservations. I'm not sure it was her intent to eat slugs, but given her laissez-faire attitude towards things like this, I don't believe that even if she could have seen them that she would have bothered to flick them off. Too much work. She always told me, "You have to eat a pound of dirt in your life," so fuck it, why not eat a pound of slugs too?

So we'd go inside, wash our berries (and slugs), pour some half and half on them, and go to town. Raspberries and cream are a pretty tasty treat, but I will always have this disturbing image of sitting by my grandmother and watching her eat. She had this contented look on her face, seemingly at peace with all life around her, with a big toothy grin full of slugs. Specifically I remember staring directly at her mouth and watching slugs getting ground up into a nice raspberry, creamy, sluggy slurry. It never occurred to me to do what would logically be the polite thing to do and go, "Hey uh, you know you're eating a bunch of slugs right?" I don't know why. Didn't want to disturb the balance I guess.