On ‘Alone’ Finale, Slugs Have Never Seemed So Delicious (VIDEO)

On Alone, contestants are just that: isolated in the Vancouver wilderness on their own with minimal supplies and left to fend for themselves. And in Thursday’s finale, going solo seems to have gotten to competitor Alan Kay, 40, who gets way too excited about something pretty gross in the clip below:

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Alan tells us there were plenty of challenges. “[The weather] would just grind you down slowly. I mean, I have pretty cold weather in the mountains where I live [in Georgia], but just the constant rain and wind and cold there was really tough,” he says. And since the contestants film themselves, they also have to be their own camera crew. “You end up spending more physical energy than you normally would if you were just out there surviving, and then the mental energy of having that extra thought process of, How am I going to convey this experience?” Here, Alan tells us more about those slugs and survival:

In the season finale, you find kind of a treasure trove of slugs. Have you ever been more excited to see a slug?
I was definitely excited to see slugs. That was a good food source. And the slugs up there are just huge, I mean, they’re bigger than they actually appear on camera. They’re massive, and they were tasty.

Are they something you would ever consider eating if there were other options available?
Well, I think slug is usually not people’s first choice, but in that situation, when you’re really living in an austere environment, it works out. It’s a food source. Really, the insect kingdom is overlooked. In a lot of countries, they lean heavily on insects, and pound for pound, nutritionally, they’re superior to a lot of the proteins that we use in the western culture. I think a lot of people have a mental aversion to it, but once they try it, you realize they’re actually good.

How do you track them down? What does it feel like to “sense” a slug’s presence?
I don’t know, you just get a sense of where they like to live, and that’s where you would go look for them. You know, they come out after a rain, but of course it’s always raining out there. But, there’s just certain times when you just feel like, “if I was a slug, this is when I’d want to come out.” So I’d start walking around and looking for them, and lo and behold, there they would be, and I would start to gather them up.

A little bit of role playing, trying to think like a slug?
Right. You have to, when you’re in the woods. Your mind actually does change. You start to think more like an animal, but it’s really not even thinking, it’s just more of a , you just feel a need and you do what you have to do to fulfill that need. It’s not really on even a thought level. The longer you’re out there, you just start to, it’s almost like conventional thought and language leave you. You react, just in terms of the need to feel warmer, the need to drink water, and you just go do it.

Did boredom weigh on you, not having anything to do besides basic survival?
Well, boredom is a survival tactic. In a cold environment, your body is a furnace, and caloric energy is the fuel. So if you do things unnecessarily, then you’re going to burn yourself out, and you’re going to expend more energy than you’re taking in. So sometimes the best thing to do is absolutely nothing. And when the weather is really foul and there’s really nothing you need to do for your survival, the best thing to do is just to bed down, be totally still. Just entertain your own thoughts.

What was the first thing you wanted to when you got back to civilization?
Well, probably the biggest thing that you miss is family. You know, just being able to hold your children, just the way that they smell, just all of that, you miss that. And obviously food, you know, anything other than seaweed or fish, just something with texture to it. It was nice to get to that.

Alone, Season finale Thursday, August 20, 10/9c, History Channel