This garden-variety Albany snail went somewhere slowly on a wet day in June.
After a period of rain the other day, I happened to notice these two fellows, the one above and the other one below.
Calling them “fellows” is probably both politically and biologically incorrect. One of the first things you learn when you look for information on snails is that they are hermaphrodites, with male and female organs in the same body.
There are 124 species of terrestrial molluscs — snails and slugs — in Oregon, according to the state Department of Agriculture. Twenty-eight of them are “exotic,” meaning not native to the state, like a lot of us who came here from somewhere else, long ago. (They don’t call us exotic, though, I hope.)
Snails in Oregon are hard to identify or tell apart because the color of their shells varies quite a bit within the same species. These two looked more or less like those that one online publication calls “garden snails.”
As far as animals go, these molluscs have to be among the slowest on Earth. Their top speed is listed as 1.3 centimeters per second. (That’s slow, but it’s still faster than the city of Albany’s efforts to move or get rid of the old church at Santiam and Main. This has been going on for years, and the place has not moved an inch.)
Snails can live everywhere, in wet climates and dry. They usually move about at night, but they also often show themselves in the daytime when it rains. And that’s what brought these two to my attention.
They were underfoot, and if I hadn’t looked down just then they might easily have been not just slow but flat and dead as well.
I asked them if I could take their pictures, for use on a slow spring day. Go ahead, they said. Or maybe not. Maybe I just thought that’s what they said. (hh)
This mollusk seemed to be headed down a little cliff.
I do wish the garden snails would take up another hobby! Either that, or learn to exercise discernment and become weed eradicating garden snails, or perhaps grass-in-the-fence-line managing snails. Instead, I have gangs of them invading my veg patch and flower beds. I suppose I will just try not to sweat it and crack open a couple of beers, one for me, and one for them.
So true. This wet weather has brought out the snail masses.
They were going crazy wiping out my bean crop. This Buds for them :)
It is a great ‘time’ to take time to smell the flowers!! I bury my face in the roses, and enjoy this sweet space of home. It takes on a new meaning as we spend more time here at home. It is more than shelter/grab a bite/shower…………out again to work/school. Introspection/meditation/conversation/……… just the act of sitting back and looking around at what we all go outside for to pay for……….. this spot, our home—– enjoy it now and today. Breathe!
Thanks for a great laugh this Sunday morning. We loved the comment about snail speed versus the City of Albany!
This will fix those pesky snails:
Escargot tastes much better if the snails feed on human food for three or four days before consuming them. Collect them in a clean plastic bucket fitted with a screen lid for ventilation. Keep them in a cool, shady location. Add some raw vegetables or uncooked grains and let them graze. Sprinkle a few drops of water into the enclosure each day to keep them moist. Rinse the snails thoroughly in clean running water and hang them in a mesh bag (out of the sun) for 24 to 48 hours without food — this will allow their digestive systems to empty out. Remove any dead snails before cooking.
Add the snails to a pot of boiling water and cook them for several minutes to loosen the flesh from the shells. Rinse them in cool water and prick out the meat with the tip of a knife. To remove the last of the slime, rinse the snails in a bowl of vinegar water (1/2 cup of vinegar per gallon of water). Repeat this process several times with fresh water and vinegar until the mucus is gone. They are now ready to become escargot — the classic recipe is to simply sauté them in garlic, butter and a dash of white wine.
Love it. Red wine please instead of white. Lots of it. LOL
We seldom see snails on our farm but their homeless cousin, the slug, have taken up permanent residence since we lost post harvest thermal destruction (aka field burning) from our repertoire of farming practices. We have developed excellent slug and vole habitat however.
We are restricted on when and how we can use the most effective slug baits out of deference for some endangered goose species. So, I tried using little pans of beer for which, we had heard, the slugs had a taste for and would drown in a drunken stupor. But my beer tab went up drastically and the employees charged with distributing the pans around the fields start showing up later and later for work.
Then the thought was escargot ! But when I tried to order little plastic snail shells to put them in (I thought the presentation was important) I could only source them in China and . . . well, president Trump put an end to that. Besides, does anyone really like escargot ? One and done for me.
Awesome post!