Something New and Something Fat

On the left, I kid you not, is a pair of garden slugs MATING! I only noticed them because as we were walking through the little bit of woods we pass through on our way to the hayfield, I was looking for the cranefly orchids that have now set seeds and are growing the leaves (a single leaf for each plant) that will be the only evidence of their existence until they bloom again late next summer. Suddenly I saw this... THING. Which - it turns out - is in fact a pair of slugs mating. "Slugs are hermaphrodites, having both female and male reproductive organs. Once a slug has located a mate, they encircle each other and sperm is exchanged through their protruded genitalia. A few days later, the slugs lay approximately thirty eggs in a hole in the ground, or beneath the cover of an object such as a fallen log." The blue thing is the genitalia. By the time we got back about an hour later they had finished and were wandering away from each other.

And of course the other half of the photo is Porky. He was under our big oak tree, eating acorns. We're having a HUGE acorn year. When the wind blows it sounds like an artillery barrage as they hit the tin roof of our house.