EscarGo!

So I just walked into the kitchen to find Madeline and her three friends racing the snails they brought home from school across my kitchen counter.

(I suggested they find a better location for the race).

But it reminded me of this classic Madeline story. We were at our friends' house when Madeline was about 3 years old. She came in from outside and said she needed to wash her hands, which if you knew Maddie at 3 years old, could only mean she was up to something. I looked at her hands and they were coated in something thick that looked a little like vaseline. We went into the bathroom to wash her hands, and the substance wouldn't come off. We tried scrubbing with soap and water, wiping with a towel, even scraping with our fingernails and it would not come off. At this point we were in a bit of a panic about what she could have gotten into--maybe it was a chemical and it was eating away at her skin? None of the kids saw her getting into anything.

Finally one of the kids suggested that maybe she had smushed one of the slugs they'd seen her playing with. And guess what? That was exactly what she'd done. Smushed it up and rubbed it all over her hands.

As disgusting as that was, at least we knew what to use to get the slime off her hands. A large supply of table salt. Which is what is now needed to clean my kitchen counter.