Oh the Waste! Slug Sheen on a Fallen Pawpaw

This morning I went out for a run. It was still dark but in the street light's glare I could see that a pawpaw had fallen in the grass. And the pawpaw looked uncommonly wet, given that I've turned off the sprinklers for the season. I had my suspicions about what it might be... 

...So after my run I did some inspecting. The pawpaw hadn't been wet--it had been covered in slug sheen! Absolutely covered! As if a pack of slugs--or a solitary slug with OCD--had descended upon the fruit after it had plummeted from the tree, determined touch each square millimeter of the pawpaw with a slimy, disgusting slug foot.

Pawpaws are often found in hollows, in their native range, but here the hollows had been opened up on the pawpaw, the habitation of roly polys.

In another spot, I found a slug/roly-poly communal watering hole.

I added this sad pawpaw to the list on our pawpaw harvest tracker. The 19th pawpaw from the Shenandoah. Yesterday, we had intimations that it could be this way with pawpaws that fall during the night (though it wasn't this way last year). But I had no idea that the lowly creatures of the yard could ramp up their efforts so quickly. Slug sheen all over a pawpaw?

Not wanting to give the slugs any other windfalls, I went out and shook the Shenandoah before heading off to work. Seven more fell and I was able to pick them up from the lawn within just a few second, not enough time for our aggressive slugs to coat them in slime. Here's NJ holding a big fruit that fell this morning.