Bill Pushes Banana Slug as State’s Official Mollusk

It looks disgusting, like a severed human tongue, and it secretes sticky slime.

Yet it has become a college mascot, and now a state legislator is bucking to give this seemingly ignoble creature instant respectability by elevating it to the enviable status of--are you sitting down?--California’s official mollusk.

Yes, the lowly banana slug, a snail without a shell, has become an issue in Sacramento’s corridors of power. And Tuesday, the Assembly’s Governmental Organization Committee voted 12 to 2 to approve a bill that would bestow an official title on the icky-looking thing.

And why not? State lawmakers, who have long been suckers for official symbols, have already settled on an official state reptile (the desert tortoise) and an official state fossil (the saber-toothed cat). Pending bills would name an official state song (“I Love You, California”) and an official state dance (West Coast swing).

So it isn’t surprising that the banana slug, predominantly yellow in color and found mainly in redwood forests, is creeping into the limelight. After all, the gastropod has been on a public relations roll for the last several years.

In 1986, students at UC Santa Cruz voted to adopt the slug as the official mascot of its athletic teams, a move calculated at unnerving older sports fans. The slug replaced the sea lion.

The town of Guerneville, 60 miles northwest of San Francisco, also holds annual Celebrations of the Noble Banana Slug, where enthusiasts can watch slug races and sample such fare as slughetti, strawberry almond slug shortcake and Sichuan slug rolls, last year’s winning entry.

The Legislature’s intentions, however, are a bit more high-minded.

“It (a banana slug) contributes to the health of the forest by eating poison oak and (other) dead leaves and turning them into nutrients that nourish the state tree, which is the redwood tree,” said Assemblyman Byron D. Sher (D-Palo Alto), sponsor of the mollusk bill.

“It’s just a quality slug, is what it is.”

Sher said the idea for his bill came from a group of Redwood City Camp Fire Girls, who wrote to his office a year ago and suggested some kind of state honor for the slug. He said he sponsored the bill this year in hope of using it as a tool to educate students in his district’s 60 elementary schools about the workings of state government.

Appear Before Members

On Tuesday, Sher and six of the campfire girls appeared before the Assembly members--a few of whom were impatient, others clearly amused--to show off a terrarium of slugs and tell the lawmakers how the creatures were the next best thing to Fido.

“Um, they are slimy, but they’re really nice, actually,” Angela DiMare, 8, told reporters outside the committee room as one of her friends held a slug in her hand. “Even though they look yucky, they are loving and caring in their heart . . . if they have one.”

Of course, even slugs couldn’t dodge hardball politics. At one point, Assemblyman Trice Harvey (R-Bakersfield) tried to persuade the panel that the abalone should be the designated mollusk.

When that didn’t set well with his colleagues, Harvey suggested a political compromise: Make the abalone the mollusk of the sea, the banana slug the mollusk of the land.

Laughed Off Stand

But committee members laughed Harvey off the witness stand and, looking amused, they voted to send the bill to the full Assembly for approval.

“If you want a bill, bring a bunch of cute little kids here and you can’t lose,” observed Assemblyman Richard E. Floyd (D-Hawthorne), chairman of the committee.

Sher said he hopes the bill will slide through the Senate and wriggle onto the desk of Gov. George Deukmejian for his signature.

“If we get it through the Legislature, then we’ll slug it out with the governor,” Sher said.

SOME ODD CALIFORNIA MASCOTS