Things you learn when you have a baby

[oloriel]

The mucus of the Spanish slug is unpleasant and evil-tasting, but not poisonous.

Isn't that soothing?

I mean, I sort of intuited the "unpleasant and evil-tasting" bit. The "non-poisonous" part I learned from calling the Poison Hotline just now. Because, guess what? Felix tried to eat a slug.


He loves sitting on the garden path and playing with pebbles (that is, picking them up and putting them down in some other place, preferably behind some partition or in some sort of vessel, like a bucket). He knows by now that he is not supposed to take the pebbles into his mouth, so like any good toddler, he'll try to push one into his mouth anyway just to see if I still say "No". Sometimes, he'll ignore the "No". All you can do then is put your hand at the ready in case he chockes on it, and hope that he'll just move it around with his tongue and then spit it out. Fortunately, he hasn't tried swallowing pebbles yet.

Today, I saw him picking up a big brown pebble, and saw his hand move face-wards, and duly said "NO, Felix, don't eat that pebble". He had apparently already met his quota of obeying the "No", so he put it into his mouth. Normally, he then looks highly focused as his tongue pushes the pebble around. Today, he looked alarmed and disgusted... and spit out the big brown pebble, which turned out to be not a pebble at all but a big brown slug.
(EW EW EW EW EW EW EW EW EW!)

I took him inside to wash his lips and hands then (of course, they were full of mucus too) and noticed that his teeth had gone all yellow and that his gums appeared red and blistered. So I did the second thing that came to mind: I called Felix' pediatrist and the poison hotline.
Our problem was a somewhat exotic one, so I didn't get any immediate information but instead the poison hotline lady promised to check her literature and call back. Five minutes later, she did indeed call back to inform me that to the best of her literature's knowledge, the slugs we have around here aren't poisonous to humans. Their mucus, however, is "evil-tasting and unpleasant" (NO REALLY!) so I was to offer Felix a lot of his beverage of choice to wash it off and down. The blistering might just be residue of the mucus and the reddenned gums might indicate an allergic reaction, so if that didn't get better with drinking, I was to see the pediatrist about it. (Who was waiting for my call anyway because he had no idea concerning the right course, either, so he wanted to know for future reference. I CANNOT BELIEVE THAT NO TODDLER IN THIS TOWN EVER TRIED TO SWALLOW A SLUG BEFORE. Am I the only parent who was concerned about potential poisoning? >_>)

Fortunately, due to the non-poisonous nature of the mucus, milk was fine, because guess what Felix refuses when he feels upset? Yup, anything that isn't milk. Now that he has drunk a fair bit, he has fallen asleep to recover from the exertion.


And thus we missed today's toddler group meeting. At least (I hope) Felix may have learned not to put soft (or ideally: any) pebbles into his mouth? :P Probably asking too much.

Comments

[chili-das-schaf.livejournal.com]

Auuuuuuuugh.

Make a mental note to take him out to a fancy French restaurant when he is of age and order slugs for him, just to see his face when you cheerfully tell this story. Parental karma replay.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

The French don't eat slugs, they eat snails. Slugs are the nasty ones that come without shells. Snails, on the other hand - particularly grapevine snails, the ones that get eaten - don't do the mucus thing.

My father (who is not French, actually) regularly made baked snails with garlic butter when I was (much) younger. Back then, you could buy them by the bucket at the weekly market in town. As a kid, I found that endlessly fascinating - when you bought them, the snails were still alive, and you'd see the big buckets on the market place where the snails tried to make their way out. Periodically, the stallkeeper would shove them back down - they were after all not very fast...

Anyway, I used to really like them as a kid. We had them about once or twice per month in the season, IIRC - always on Saturday evening because Saturday was market day. (God, that sounds so historical. I SWEAR I WAS BORN IN 1983, IT JUST WAS A RURAL AREA OK.) Dad only stopped making them when my mom stopped eating them - which was shortly after she began to hunt slugs (not snails) in the garden because they ate her plants. She cut them in half, so all the innards spilled out, and that spoiled her appetite. (We didn't know back then that killing slugs that way only attracted more of their brethren.) - These days, I probably wouldn't eat snails without inhibitions, as I've grown into a culture of non-snail-eaters. That's a purely acquired (dis-)taste, though! As I remember snail-eating and the special earthenware snail plates my parents had - with indentations for the shells and a little bowl for the garlic butter in the middle - when I eat steak that's a bit over-cooked or (oddly enough) zucchini that's been spiced with parsley, I assume the taste was somewhere in that direction. The snail meat wasn't slimy, either, but a nice tight piece of muscle, like smallish medaillons of pork.

But that's baked snail, not raw slug, and that was then - back in the olden days, when I myself had just barely learned that you shouldn't put ants in your mouth... ;)

[chili-das-schaf.livejournal.com]

I had no idea that there is a difference, I just knew "Schnecken" ;)

As we had market days on Saturday and Wednesday in Zollstock and AFAIK it is still like that it doesn't sound historical at all - actually I now live in a far more rural area and have no idea when or where the market is there.

Chocolate covered ants are a dessert somewhere, I think in Italy (too lazy to google right now).

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

There are still markets, but I don't think they have such an impact on when you eat certain things as they used to have in my childhood. Aside from family rituals (we ALWAYS had pea soup for lunch on Saturdays, because my father prepared great quantities of that in advance, then froze it in lunch-sized portions, and before we went to the market, he'd take out one portion and put it in the pot - by the time we came back, it was defrozen, so you just had to briefly re-heat it. And when there were snails, it was always for Saturday evening), some veggies just weren't had if they weren't in season. I don't think that's particularly common anymore (except for strawberries and asparagus maybe), unless someone is being particularly attentive. (I'm trying to be, but it's hard to resist the lure of tomatoes-all-year-round...)

Ants are eaten in several places, as are all sorts of insects. As a kid in the garden, however, I didn't cover them in chocolate or (at least) cook them. Soft tissue of the mouth + formic acid = OUCH. That's the lesson I learned. ^^

[chili-das-schaf.livejournal.com]

I think that's also a family thing, not necessarily just a generaion related one - I was born 1981 and vividly remember visiting the weekly market with my mom, so she definitely frequented it, but we never had day-related meals, only seasonal-related ones. And even those were things like asparagus and strawberries in Spring, like you already mentioned. Mushroom season is what I can remember and when certain berries were available.

My brother learned the lesson to not sit down on a lawn where red ants live when only a diaper is protecting your behind.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Quite possible! It's hard to tell personal experience and general experience apart, anyway. After all, you didn't eat snails, either... ;)

Ants are such convincing teachers, aren't they! :P