Janet Baraclough wrote:
The message
from Malcolm contains these words:

It's odd, isn't it, that we find slimy things a cause for "yuck". I
have no phobias involving wildlife but I still prefer not to pick
slugs up in my bare fingers.

If you think slugs are horrible, try NZ flatworms :-(.Even
slimier.
In fact, don't pick them up with bare hands because their copious
slime is supposed to damage skin...maybe it's starting to digest it,
like it does earthworms.

NZ Flatworms arrived on Arran about 4 years ago.
snip
Apparently they are so heat-sensitive that 30 degrees C
will kill them; so standing a potted plant in hand hot water for a
while should do the trick (I haven't tried this out yet to see if
the
flatworms have read the same website).

My first - and only, encounter with NZFs was back around 1980 in
Edinburgh.
Never having seen anything like it, I took the first specimen along to
Edin. Uni. Biology Dept who identified it as Artioposthia triangulata
and eagerly took all the details and pickled the specimen.
And that was that - or so I thought. Next spring my greenhouse was
alive with the things under growbags.
They may succumb to 30deg C but they can survive 0 deg C. My original
find was in an ice encrusted plant which I had taken into the
greenhouse. I thought it was a piece of chewing gum, flat and white,
but in the course of a few hours it had transmogrified into the liver
coloured flatworm which curled up like a watch spring.
All sorts of horrendous portents were predicted at the time but, I am
happy to say that they still have earthworms in Edinburgh.

--
ned