An albino slug.
The past few days have been a blur of activity, thanks to the crew of Sarita: Richard, Jude and Katya.
After stopping by with a freshly-baked loaf of bread Thursday morning (who wouldn’t love neighbours like that?), they came over for a cup of tea which led to an invitation to join them for dinner. It was a fantastic night! The wine and the conversation flowed freely and, before we knew it, it was after midnight so we left them to continue the party and made our way home.
It rained most of the day Friday, which was just as well because we all needed to recover a bit from the previous night. But the weather changed quickly and by Saturday, it was another beautiful day. As well as a busy one. Jude invited me to join them for a hike up Llanover Mountain. Now. I realize I just called this particular hike “hair-brained”, but I was happy to go again because, well, I’m a glutton for punishment. And I’ll be the first to admit that I enjoyed myself … greatly. They’re a lovely family clearing enjoying their new lifestyle and a lot of fun to be around. Besides, who in their right mind would pass up the opportunity to compete in the “Slug Game”?
Slugs are common to the area and come in all shapes, sizes and colours: There are brown slugs, banana slugs, spotted slugs and albino slugs (or ghost slugs), just to name a few. Each slug is allocated points based on its rarity (some slugs are more common than others in certain areas, so the points change from hike to hike). If you see a slug, you call out and earn the amount of points allocated to that particular type. For this hike, the albinos were the bread-winners earning 500 points while the more common brown slug only brought in two. The object of the gameis to find more slugs than anyone else, thus earning the most points. Today’s winner was Katya, but it wasn’t a slug that did it. She managed to spot a small lizard, the colour of mud with a bright orange belly, earning her a thousand points – a most impressive win.
And then it was on to activities more appealing to the likes of David – pizza and a game of Risk. It was my first time playing and I needed some help with strategy so, after pausing the game last night due to lateness, I consulted the movie To Be or Not to Be in hopes of gaining some tips about world domination from the likes of Mel Brooks and Hitler. But it seems David has watched the movie more than I because he took us all to task with his Black Army and, by the end of the tonight, had completely wiped us all off the face of the earth.
Meanwhile, Katya sat by quietly amidst the cries of “bring it on”, “give it your best shot” and “you’re going down” to draw two pictures for David and me – a buccaneer and a dragon – which are now proudly hanging aboard Cambria. She’s clearly talented and we’re quite grateful that we now have two signed originals to help see us through our retirement once she makes it big in the art world. Thanks, Katya! You’re the best!
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