Tuesday Crustie: Slaters

One day in Melbourne, Garry said something to me about slaters. As happened on more than one occasion while I was living in Australia, I looked at him with complete vacuity. Then, we played a quick 50 point round of my favourite game show at the time, Explain it to the dumb Canadian.

After several moments of the sort of frustrating dialogue you one person tries to find some way of explaining something very simple to someone with no reference point (e.g., explaining “ballet slipper pink” to someone blind; explaining Gwar to someone who has taste), the light finally dawned that he was talking about something like these:

“Pillbugs!”, said I. And Garry agreed, and we were finally back sharing some common understanding.

So there you have it: A quick tale of two scientists divided by a common language. Some day, I’ll tell the “texter” story.

This particular beast is Porcellio scaber, I think.

Photo by ivantotuga on Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.