Eckholt I. Cunningly, the world's top professional slug wrestler, was found dead today in a California cucumber patch, apparently the victim of a hostile encounter with an unusually aggressive and formidable slug...or slugs.

Worried family members had been trying to contact Cunningly on his cellular phone for hours when the body was found by a crew of migrant cucumber pickers. He had apparently gone out, as was his wont, "to check out the local talent".

Juan Gonzalez, a veteran picker, said he was making his way row by row through the field of cucumbers when he noticed a disturbed area of the field. There were broken plants strewn about and the earth showed signs of a desperate struggle. The puzzled Mr Gonzalez followed the trail until he found Cunningly, the famous slug wrestler, lying face down on the ground.

"At first I think maybe he was the victim of a mugging," said Mr Gonzalez, "but then I notice the slime! There was a lotta slime all over him! I turn him over and say, oh by gosh! I know this guy. I seen him one time years ago on Geraldo wrestling slugs. He was amazing."

Paramedics were rushed to the scene but failed to find a pulse. Eckholt Cunningly was pronounced dead at 11:25 AM, Calfornia time.

The cause: Death by slug attack.

"We feared it would come to this," said Mr Cunningly's weeping wife, Daphne. "'E was gettin' on in years, and 'e 'adn't been takin' 'is Wild Yak Extract supplements regular loik I told 'im to."   Daphne Cunningly has faithfully accompanied Eckholt across the world throughout the past 30 years as he took on and defeated the toughest slugs in every country in Europe, most of North America, and in exotic locales as far away as Sumatra, Liberia, New Zealand, and Madagascar.

"I told 'im 'e was gettin' too old for the game," said Mrs Cunningly, "but 'e just wouldn't quit. "'E always was lookin' forward to tykin' on a bigger and meaner slug than the last one."

"This time," added their son, Stigweard Cunningly, "he took on one slug too many. If I find the bastard slug that did this, I'm salting him, I swear it!" Stigweard plans to go in his father's footsteps, so it's not quite yet time for the slugs of the world to become too compacent...

Meanwhile, a local promoter from Oakland, "Dick Dastardly" (apparently a stage name), has offered $5,000 to anyone who can locate the slug that outfought Eckholt Cunningly. Dastardly plans to get a trainer and a trailer, have the slug go professional and stage fights with it across the USA and eventually the world. Stigweard Cunningly says he is training relentlessly himself and will be ready to meet the slug in the arena within 6 months or less, if it has the slime to come forward and face him.

Santa Cruz police, however, are considering the possibility that a large number of ordinary-sized slugs may have "swarmed" Eckhold Cunningly for some reason. "I don't believe one slug could have done it," said Detective Lancelot Davenport. "I think we're looking at a swarming here. Upwards of 5000 slugs suddenly attacking en masse."

"That's a load of rubbish!" exclaimed Daphne Cunningly. "Slugs are rugged individualists, they are, and they don't never (sic) work together. They don't bloody well swarm anyone. Wot we are lookin' for 'ere is one slug, one murderous slug, about the size of, oh, a Morris Minor or an Austin Minie, I'd say. You can see the sign plain by the disturbances on the ground and the prodidious quantities of slime. This bastard was a great, enormous, slimy killer wot must have been the biggest slug ever seen in these parts. It's because of all these damned bloody chemicals wot California is dumpin' on the fields to make the vegetables grow unnatural loik. We are going to sue the state, Governor Schwarzenneger, and the farm for all they've got!" At that point Mrs Cunningly broke down and was escorted, weeping loudly, from the scene of the tragedy by comforting friends and relatives.

Still another theory put forward by local standup comic, Harry Ames, which could help explain all that slime is that it was not a slug at all which did in Eckholt Cunningly, but a municipal, state or federal politician, while others say, no, it must have been a Hollywood Lawyer. "The one question I want answered," quips Harry Ames, "is this: Where was F. Lee Bailey on the morning of September 8, 2006?"

And so ends a glorious career which had taken Eckholt I. Cunningly from his humble roots in Swinefleet, Yorkshire, UK to appearances on U.S.A. Talk TV and a documentary on Belgian Television in 1992, when Cunningly fought and defeated the Belgian reigning champion slug "Ziggy" in a steel cage match in Brussels.

"It's not easy to pin a slug," Cunningly said in a recent interview. "They're smarter, faster, and meaner than most people think, and they've got incredible reflexes! You've got to have good hands and absolutely steady nerve at all times. It doesn't do to lose your nerve, because they can smell the fear and once they do...it's all over. I never met a slug yet that could put the fear in me. That's why I am where I am today...at the pinaccle."

We'll never know if Eckholt Cunningly lost his nerve in an obscure cucumber patch in southern California, and we may never know who was the slug (or the slugs) who laid him low, but we do know one thing. For Eckholt Cunningly it was a slug too far.