It was June of ’09, and my men (Riley & Lilly) and I were enjoying the summer as best as we could. We’d been suffering through a heat wave that had left us parched and exhausted, and our weary bodies were trying to soak up every last breath of fresh air we could before heading back to base (into the house) for refueling and resupplying. Things had been peaceful… maybe TOO peaceful… but that, coupled with the soaring temperatures and humidity as thick as chowder, caused us to let down our guard.
I was watching my men do their advanced individual and situational training exercises, when Private Riley said “Hey, Mom! Watch me jump off the slide!” I walked closer, to get the best evaluation, and THAT was when I saw the enemy moving in.
It was a lone soldier (slug), and he was using a wall-climbing side-flank ambush tactic that I’d seen before, and that had helped advance many other enemy soldiers into critical camp locations (like the basement) in the past. I knew we had to jump into action quickly, or our field training location would soon be compromised. I thought over our options quickly, and came up with the best strategy for taking down our adversary. “Hey, I’ve heard that you can kill slugs by shaking salt on them… wanna try it?” I commanded.
My men jumped into action. “Uh… okay” replied Private Riley, grabbing his munitions. After gathering some supplies, he asked “What’s supposed to happen?”
“Well, I’m not sure, I’ve never done it… but I think they’re supposed to shrivel up and dry out”. Private Riley then threw me some ammunition and boldly suggested “Ew… YOU DO IT!”
I leapt into action, tossing handfuls of the caustic material onto the huge (about 5 inch) soldier, which fell to the ground at once, hard. “Aaaaah!” Private Riley screamed. “Eeeeeeeeeew!” I shouted back, as the soldier began writhing on the ground. His body was frozen, but he was waving his head back and forth, obviously screaming for backup (even though we couldn’t hear him, we were sure that was what was happening). “That is so gross!” screamed Private Riley as he covered his eyes and retreated back to the training camp. “Yeah, that’s actually a lot more disgusting than I thought it would be” I replied, but I was glued to the spot. I’d seen too many situations where soldiers thought the enemy was dead, and turned their backs, only to be surprised by another attack, and I wasn’t going to let that happen to me. “Maybe I should put some more on it, like, just to hurry up and put it out of it’s misery, or something”. I fired again, but this soldier was tough, and was taking his time dying.
Sure enough, the enemy backup soon arrived. This was a lower-ranked soldier. “Oh, no! Here comes it’s baby!” I screamed, thinking fast. At once, the guilt began to set in, but I knew what I had to do. “Aw, man! I can’t just leave this baby now that I killed it’s mom!” I began to fire at the new soldier. “Good grief, why did I have to do this to begin with? Me and my dumb ideas.” Private Riley responded “Yeah, next time, let’s just leave them alone! That’s disgusting!”
As we watched the second soldier go down, out of the forest (of grass) came a guerrilla unit (worm), who ran into the mine-field and was quickly taken down as well. “What the heck? Where did he come from?!?!”
We tried to settle down, and recover from the battle, but little did we know it had only just begun. Suddenly an entire unit appeared out of nowhere. “Oh, you have GOT to be kidding me!”
“It’s the rest of the family!” observed Private Riley “They crawled out of the bricks on the porch!”
Fighting against a bad case of the shivers, and trying not to gag, I fired off the rest of my rounds, and as the scattered bodies were breathing their last, ANOTHER guerrilla unit appeared and joined the field of the massacred. “Alright, this is totally creeping me out, let’s go back in the house” I directed. The death toll was getting too high, and I just couldn’t take the emotional strain any longer, so we made camp for the night.
It was a restless night. “Last night I had a dream about the slugs and worms… it was really gross” I told my men at debriefing the next morning. Then we headed back to the battleground for a final body count. Sometime during the night, two more enemy soldiers had shown up, but were taken down by the remaining substance. We counted seven soldiers (slugs) and two guerrillas (worms) in all. Not bad for a unit of only two (which should’ve been three, but one was only interested in eating grass and chasing birds).
I don’t know if the war is over, but the first battle is finished, and we came out on top. Do I have my regrets? Sure. But we have secured peace for our home, and we can enjoy the back porch again. “Okay, buddy, that was not what I expected at all, so next time we’ll just leave them alone”, I told Private Riley. To which he bravely replied “Okay… Hey, Mom! Watch me jump off the porch!”
