Sleeping furiously

In the middle of the night while watching people sleep furiously, one's mind wanders. If indeed 95% of British blackcurrants go into Ribena (as advertised on TV), how am I able to pick unlimited blackcurrants just down the road, and from what is British blackcurrant jam made?

A trick for staying awake when every circadian rhythm is telling you to sleep or die (which hits me at 3.30 am) is to go outside for a beastie hunt. There are currently moths of several unidentified species fatally attracted to the lights indoors, and if bored you can leave the door open so they can entertain by flying in circles and battering off the light tubes with a distinct zapping sound. Some are a good 6 cm in extended wingspan. Same for the craneflies. During the heatwave last month, I found a honeybee trying to get through a window pane to those attractive colours inside at ~1 am. She should have been sleeping (and I believe they do), but was driven into mania by exothermy and the extreme temperatures. Outside on the slightly slimy stone backstep, there are also woodlice in many-sized multitude, and best of all, yellow slugs, Limax flavus.


The first one I spotted, I now realise, was a huge individual at 10 cm; a ghostly, almost phosphorescent yellow-grey in the light of the security lamp. I thought s/he was lost, since there's no foliage to eat on the stone backstep. But I learn that the yellow slug (unlike the larger, darker garden slug) subsists on fungus, detritus and presumably the algae that slick the wetter parts of the patio. There were four of 'em having a party out there last night, spiral patterns left on the porch after they retreat by dawn down cracks in the paving.

Slugs come in keeled and round forms, some bearing vestigial shells. Improbably, their anus and genitals are located under their mantle at their forequarters, so that their internal organs undergo a 180 degree twist during development.
http://www.arnobrosi.com/slugbio.html