This is the Day the Banana Slugs Have Their Picnic

“Don’t worry. My husband will do his Hannibal Lecter face. That would keep anyone away”

The client glances at me and quickly looks away slightly ashen. “That would certainly work,” she says. “But that’s just his normal one! Do ‘the face’, Mark.” I comply, assuming a grotesquely sinister half-leer and bulging my eyes. The client has to steady herself. Once recovered, she agrees that ‘the face’ would be a pretty major deterrent and we head off for the shoot.

A few words of explanation might be in order. Although we rarely if ever do location shoots, we have been persuaded to do some fashion photographs for an exceedingly shy would-be model. The venue is a bit of forest near Sacramento. Although private, it is popular with walkers at weekends and the owners don’t think it worthwhile putting fences and signs up. The model will be wearing a slinky evening dress and is very self-conscious. My job is to carry the heavy equipment and to stand guard. Everything set up, I find a moderately comfortable stump near a crossing and start to peruse ‘Foxe's Book of Martyrs’ - perfect reading for an early summer morning. It is midweek, so I don’t think we’ll be disturbed. It soon transpires that I was wrong. After twenty minutes or so, a couple of dedicated walkers approach. Backpacks, robust walking boots, woolly socks - the lot. I suppose I could have simply told them the area was private, but inspiration strikes and a slightly different tactic springs to mind. If Anthony Hopkins doesn’t work … this just might. For some reason, they don’t so much as glance at me so I greet them with wild enthusiasm. “Have you heard about the banana slugs? They are great … you lick them and they are totally hallucinogenic! There are oodles of them down there and they are all just waiting for you.” This is, of course, an utter fib. No self-respecting banana slug would be seen dead within a few hundred miles of the place; it is far, far too dry. But my new acquaintances neither challenge my limacological knowledge nor slacken their pace. Strange as it might seem, the pair appear more horrified than enthused about the prospect of a close encounter with the fictitious slugs. I decide to appeal to the woman’s maternal instincts. “They are just so cute! It’s the way they lie on their adorable little yellow tummies and wiggle about like anything. You simply must, must see them”. The only result of this is that they accelerate a bit and shoot past me. I have to warn the photographer and her self conscious model. I burst into song at the top of my lungs: “If you go down to the woods today you are sure of a BIG SURPRISE …” This works. The model has just time to vanish just before the unfortunate walkers sprint by. The poor dears may not have seen any examples of ariolimax columbianus, but I can’t help feeling I gave them a pretty interesting woodland experience.