The philosophy of slug handling

Would you crush a slug in the palm of your hand? I just did so while clearing up the left overs of a barbeque in the dark. Just grabbed the gate post to lock the garden and had a slippery sensation in my hand. I shone my torch onto it and the slug started looking really glassy, even though it moved a couple of inches from where I crushed it leaving a pool of liquid behind.

Impression one is that it isn't so bad and my hand did not get very sticky or anything. Am actually glad I did it, because I feel not touching stuff because you're grossed out was sort of robbing myself of an experience. You should try everything some time, and some things can turn out to be good even though you were a bit disgusted of it at first.

Secondly, a thought about evolution: I saw five other snails and slugs on the ground in close vicinity. In my area it is quite easy to step on a snail or slug by accident at night. They seem like swarms of tourists at the costa del slugheaven, there are so many of them. Gatherings of slimy caravan campers alternate with areas of even slimier nudist colonies. Anyways, this particular slug, who is now living in the actual slug heaven (or whereever slugs tend to reside once they've passed away) climbed to the top of the post of the gate, even though there is no food there. All his colleagues stayed on the ground. What was this ambitious creature doing, climbing all the way to its eventual death by my hand?

There are several morals to this story, and I cannot decide which one to choose. Climbing to the top of a bare gate post is obviously a disadvantageous slug behaviour. It expends energy even though there is only the view to enjoy. In this instance, my hand worked as evolution's wand if you will, punishing the slug for its pointless behaviour. The moral "don't do pointless stuff" is not directly transferable to humans, because only focussing on things that have a point would reduce the richness that experiencing life holds. On the other hand viewing the snail's unfortunate demise as a kind of Icarean action might make sense.

And then the role played by chance holds another lesson. Maybe there is some kind of benefit to be had for climbing fence posts that are not apparent. Maybe this snail would have become a hero to his species, founding a dynasty of fence climbing snails. And these could have gone on to become flying snails. But it was not to be...

So the point is that fate is a random and cruel thing. Or is it a beautiful thing, because I saved future mankind from encountering slimy flying invertebrates? Many things are random, but maybe not everything. I have an idea about randomness as a function of the context of things which will be a good topic for a future posting. But for now: good night!