An escargatoire of snails...

It rained in the night, not a torrential rain but that steady fine wetness that you sometimes get on warm early autumn evenings. When I got up this morning I noticed that, out in the backyard, the snails had come out to play… a lot of snails. Picking up an empty flower pot I started to collect them – first one, then two, then three, sometimes two or three together, once six in the same planter. They were everywhere; up in the ivy, down in the geraniums, crawling all over the nasturtiums - the rain and warmth had brought out a veritable escargatoire of snails.

Within about half an hour I must have picked up a hundred or so and that didn’t include the ones that I unavoidably stepped on as I gathered my collection of terrestrial pulmonate gastropod molluscs.

Now, I quite like snails. As a boy I used to collect them and keep them in a jar, but these days I see them more as a nuisance than anything else; they eat the plants and leave slimy trails everywhere. But looking at them this morning in bulk, I noticed once again just how beautiful in shape and colour they are. If it wasn’t for those slimy trails and their plant munching tendency I think that they’d make great house pets; they aren’t noisy, can’t run away, will happily eat vegetable leftovers and are calming to watch. Yes, I quite fancy a house snail or two.

My intention had been to put some slug pellets in with the snails, cover it with a slate, and leave them to slowly expire, but as I watched them casually climbing all over themselves I realised that I couldn’t do it. They were too beautiful to mass murder. Instead I took my flower pot down the road and released my snail circus into the grounds of the local Presbyterian Church. Oh, I know that they’ll be back but I can always collect them and move them on again.