A Real Start!

This guy gave me a real start yesterday morning.
I must have been some 10 inches away from him and looking down at the base of the mangosteen plant as i stood watering the same. when i happened to just look up and to the right, there he was, doing this bizaare "cobra" stance. and what with the wing like pair of leaves, he really did startle me for a second!
but isn't it amazing how nature has equipped it with an in built sense creating a pretty effective stance to ward of predators/
basically it's just a soft slug, and a very attractive one i must say.
i wanted to brush him off from the precious mangosteen plant and then i saw that some of the branches higher up were giving off fresh shoots of leaves so i said to myself why harm the slug if it really wasn't harming the tree.
but only did morning when i saw the slug on another branch did i realise that the fresh shoots actually were on the "twin" jamun tree (ref my "2 in 1" blog) and that the mangosteen actually had no new shoots left on it whatsoever.
The attractive little slug was merrily chomping away and sucking out all the life sap from the branches!
now that indeed got my sap - or is that goat?
whoooaa, i just couldn't let that happen.
directed one good spray and he was off the plant and down on the ground. did not feel like killing him so just picked up a dead branch , let him climb on it and hurled the two far away from the tree.
must check tomorrow morning to see if he hasn't returned by any chance.
but he is quite beautifull isn't he?
i have another close up shot but i found the above picture with the spread of the leaves to be more dramatic.