yellow mystery

•

Sometimes, it's the little things, the odd things that jiggle our day. Spark our curiosity.

"I saw this yellow slug on the Third Creek Greenway this morning and I wondered if you could tell me anything about it," emailed Karen Bishop, "I never knew they came in any color but gray. It was curious and lively and I moved it to the grass. In it's own way it was really beautiful."

Karen sent me the photo she had just taken on the paved greenway with the simple discovery. It had rained heavily that morning and Third Creek and the floodplain were well saturated. The little banana-colored mystery—about the size of Karen's pinkie finger—was simply moving to higher ground. 

I, not being a gastropod mollusk expert, didn't know we had yellow slugs in Tennessee either. So I had to do a little sleuthing online. The other odd thing about this curious creature is the partial shell it carries on its back. A remnant of its evolutionary past?

Ultimately, I came to believe that the mysterious yellow slug was Testacella haliotidea, or "earshell slug," a shelled slug that's an air-breathing, carnivorous land slug (They live underground and eat earthworms). T. haliotidea is native to the Atlantic Coast of Europe and Great Britain and the western Mediterranean, imported into this country accidentally, or we assume it was an accident.

Online I have found it mentioned only in California, Oregon and Pennsylvania. But perhaps it's here in the Volunteer State as well.

Does anyone know? Do we have any mollusk experts out there?

•