Wednesday, March 02, 2005

pasta slugs

I came home, saw myself on TV (more of that later) and then decided to make myself some dinner. I have some of that microwaveable toxic pasta you can get, 90 seconds and it's done. I added a can of tomatoes to it with mushrooms and herbs and a bit of Light Philadelphia cheese. Then I stood on something.

I put my hand down to the floor and picked up a piece of penne pasta, I didn't quite understand how it had got on the floor. Amazing how slimy and horrible pasta can feel sometimes, almost like a slug that had crawled in from the garden.

This piece of pasta, I noticed, wasn't hollowed out like an ordinary piece of penne, curiously it was kind of solid all the way through. Shit, it actually was a slug. What a blindie!

I put it back on the floor, found some kitchen towel and wrapped it up carefully. I then went to the kitchen bin, found the can of tomatoes I'd just used and stuffed the wrapped slug into it putting the lid back on. Truly a prisoner in my house, now.

I went to the bathroom to wash the slime off my hands. Unlike pasta slime, slug slime is rather difficult to remove - I've discovered this before. I washed away with my squirty bathroom soap but after the second wash the slime had become worse and spread! Seriously, don't ever pick up a slug.

Not wishing to stand there washing and washing and washing, I took a decisive measure. Bleach. I'll bleach it off. I went to the kitchen to get my kitchen surface cleaner, brought it into the bathroom and trigger-pumped the detergent all over the affected hand. One good bleachy lathering later and all the goo had gone.

It struck me later that, if I could see, I would have been able to look at the bleach bottle to see whether or not they recommend cleaning yourself with their product. Happily though, it worked, and although my left hand even now smells unpleasantly like a cross between rotting flesh and my linen basket, it was a job well done. There is definitely a serious point in here somewhere about access to information about products but frankly I can't be arsed to find it.

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