Standing at the edge of San Francisquito Creek in Palo Alto, Grayson Jr. (who was simply called Grayson by his friends) played with a silver pocket watch and removed something from the stem-winder. Then he brought the watch up to his eye while peering into the creek and exclaimed, “Yes, that’s it, with the red legs!” Then he crouched down, wetting the knees of his tweed trousers, and put the watch up to his eye again.

There was a rustling nearby, and a slight man with sandy colored hair wearing gold-rimmed spectacles emerged from the cattails near the creek. He was carrying a bucket in one hand, and with the other hand haphazardly pushed a couple of banana slugs that were approaching the rim back down into the bottom. He eyed the pocket watch with curiosity and then softly said, “what’s that you’ve got there?”

Grayson, as loquacious by nature as the sandy-haired fellow was taciturn, glad always to interrupt whatever he was doing to engage in conversation, said, “I’m trying to get a good photograph of Rana draytonii, the California red-legged frog, and this looks like one, what d’ya think?”

As the slight man moved towards the muddy bank of the creek to see for himself, Grayson exclaimed “whoa, friend, you’ve got quite a bucketful there!” as three more yellow slugs made for the bucket’s edge.

“Yes, yes, I see, thanks then, I’ve got it” was the reply, to which Grayson announced, “I’m Grayson Thornwick Jr., and you are?”

“Uh, Harold, Harold Heath, and I can assure you that this is indeed a Rana draytonii.”

“Ho then, pleased to make your acquaintance, you appear to know something about the local riparian fauna, I’m just out to get the shot.”

Harold Heath again eyed the pocket watch and was sufficiently intrigued to ignore his usual pattern of avoiding conversation to ask “Just what is that, anyway?”

Grayson, as you can already probably imagine, leapt at the opening to answer that it was a camera, an Expo watch Camera, and this here (he indicated the watch stem) is actually the lens cap, and these here (Harold made out two very very small buttons on the side) are what you use to actually take the photograph. “Here, have a go, friend!” and Grayson pushed the little watch which was a camera into Harold’s hand.

Now Harold, as it turns out, was quite familiar with photography, as he was among the scientists in the 1906 North Pacific expedition of the steamer Albatross, and he mentioned this to Grayson.

Grayson was intrigued but exclaimed “1906, that was the year of the quake and the Great Fire!”

Harold replied that the Albatross sailed out of San Francisco Bay on May 6, 1906, as the earlier planned departure had been delayed by those tragic and horrific events of April 18.

“What kind of scientist are you, and what sort of expedition was this?” asked Grayson.

Harold stared fixedly at the small frog and replied “It was to geographically survey Pacific fish resources, primarily, it was headed up by the ichthyologist Charles Henry Gilbert, he chairs Stanford’s Zoology department and he’s my boss. We surveyed all the way to the Aleutian Islands and the Bering Sea, but on the way back there was a tremendous squall and the Captain went overboard and we never could find him.”

Here, Harold paused, and briefly glanced at Grayson. “Last maritime expedition for me, my specialty is terrestrial gastropod mollusks.” Then Harold subtly but visibly shuddered and clenched his jaw tightly.

“Must have been a terrible thing to see, losing a man like that.”

Harold looked again at the watch camera in his hand and then looked back down into his bucket. He wasn’t one for recollections, and this had stirred up a terrifying memory. He appeared, briefly, to be quite lost in thought until he started, gave the little camera back to Grayson, and resumed pushing slugs back down into the bucket.

Although he had paid close attention to Harold’s brief story, Grayson’s mood was not dampened by the tragic tale. “So then you’re faculty at Stanford. Well, I’m a freshman in the History Department and that would exclaim why our paths have heretofore not crossed. And you might be wondering what a History student is doing looking at frogs, and I would too as there’s no obvious connection, I’m more of a dog fellow, but it is just that I do have a passion for photography. The old Pater, that is, Father has set my path on History, Law and Political Office as he views photography or any pursuit of the arts as frivolous, financially tenuous and socially inappropriate, yet I must pursue the Muse, so to speak. That, and I met a fellow from a magazine who said he’d give me a photo credit for a photograph of Rana draytonii, the California red-legged frog, and I’m thinking that when he sees my name under a photo in a national magazine, one of stature and reputation, that would legitimize my passion. If you need photos of your fellow travelers there in the bucket – and watch that one now, he’s got some speed – I’m your man and happy to do it.”

That evening at the Biology Laboratory, Harold thought he might take Grayson up on his offer. His paper on Ariolimax Columbiamus would be ground-breaking, and using Grayson’s photos instead of his detailed drawings would provide irrefutable evidence of what he had observed.

This Grayson was a friendly fellow, awfully talkative, and this had been a fortuitous meeting, he thought.

And since he wasn’t even in the Science Department, he wouldn’t leak his discovery or worse, steal it and make it his own. As a boy, Harold’s father had pointed out that he was a gullible lad and needed to keep his wits about him. This off-hand remark, to an introverted child who tended towards obsessing over details, resulted in Harold becoming what would charitably called “guarded,” and less pleasantly termed “suspicious by nature.” These traits did make for a dedicated and fiercely observant scientist, however, and Harold’s star was soon to shine.

The following Sunday Harold asked Grayson to meet him at the Biology Lab at one o’clock and to bring his camera. He had 14 Ariolomax Californicus and Ariolimax Aphallarion, or banana slugs, and they were very active. When Grayson opened the door, already in conversation with Harold, Harold shushed the younger man and wildly waved him over to the counter. Two large glass aquariums were placed there, under the lights, and in one aquarium two slugs were curled around each other. Harold had put inked the letter A on one and B on the other, and the ink was faintly spreading due to the moist skin surface. Grayson quickly tip-toed to the counter and stood beside Harold, as Harold pointed to the intertwined slugs. Both men stared at the slugs.

“Ah, you’ve named them?”

“We need to be able to identify each specimen, clearly, in the photographs. That will show clearly, won’t it?”

“Yes, it should, as long as it doesn’t get much more blurry.”

“You know, if you touch your tongue to the slime, your tongue will go numb” muttered Harold, off-handedly.

Grayson was just thinking about how Harold came to know that fact when his eyes suddenly widened and he whispered, “Good God man, is that his bobble-whacker?”

Harold, not taking his eyes off the slugs, replied “Firstly, both Ariolimax Californicus and Ariolimax Aphallarion are hermaphrodites, with full genitalia of both sexes, so there’s no male or female. And secondly, yes, the penis when stretched out (as you can see it’s curled up there) can extend the full body length of a sex inch slug.”

Grayson let out a low whistle and whispered, “that’s one hell of a ding-dong.”

Harold frowned briefly, then continued “so what we are looking for here, is the answer to why 5% of my collected specimens do not have penises at all. I saw it last night with two specimens, and now I want you to have your camera at the ready, as I will need photographic evidence. This is ground-breaking and will rewrite all of the existing scholarship on land mollusks. It transforms our criteria for identification, and we may be standing at the very gateway to an evolutionary breakthrough.”

“So this is sort of jelly roll for two, then?” said Grayson, and “how long have they been at it then?”

Harold consulted the clock on the laboratory wall and then his notebook and replied “154 minutes and 29 seconds.”

Grayson raised his eyebrows and let out another low whistle. “Look here then, have your camera ready, it’s about to happen, the separation has commenced.”

Harold wrote furiously in his notebook and said “Ready now, the penis is now exposed ¼”, take the photo right now. The light’s good there, yes?”

“Oh, the light is excellent, I’ve got a lot of detail in the shot.”

“Penis now ⅜” exposed, photo please.”

“Hey, what the devil is going on here now, this is too-” and Grayson made faint gagging noises.

“Here it is, it is happening now, Specimen A has turned its head and commencing to gnaw on the organ – the photo please, Now!”

Grayson drew a deep breath and took the shot.

“And now Specimen B has joined in gnawing the organ, another photo now! Oh, this is superb!”

Grayson was unable to draw his gaze elsewhere and took the shot.

“That is it, the penis has been entirely severed! This is behavioral evidence of the 5% anomaly!” Harold was elated, and grinned broadly as he noted the exact time elapsed, 159 minutes and 35 seconds.

And after taking the shot, and then a final one of the two slugs completely separated, then a closer one of the slug with its penis gnawed off, Grayson put down his little camera and took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. Although the room was quite cool, he had broken out in a sweat and he felt particularly damp under his arms.

“So, when can I get those photos? You’ll develop them carefully, with lots of contrast, but only two sets of prints. They can’t be seen by anyone else until I publish my monograph. Oh, there are those who’d love to get those photos and would pay for them dearly, I know at least a dozen biologists who’d kill their own mothers for these, lock and key, keep them highly secure.”

This glimpse of Harold’s paranoid and suspicious nature served to distance Grayson from Harold, but Harold barely noticed. He had his monograph to publish and little interest in devoting much time to anything else.

As it turned out, 100 years later biologists would still be talking about this discovery, and well-funded nature periodicals, abundant in the Bay Area, found this story invariably increased subscriptions.

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