Scintillating Snails

Hey ya'll

Around here, an empty tank/cage/container usually means another animal that I can bring back and observe, and while exotics like the madagascar roaches, giant millipedes and mantises are all well and interesting as they come by, sometimes it is the more common and humble of animals that one can learn the most for. The rainy season has brought out with it, the snails and they have appeared in droves in our garden, chowing down on decaying plant matter mostly but also wreaking havoc where plant shoots are concerned. Thinking I might be doing a favor to the snails, my mother (who, incidentally is quite an avid gardener) and, of course myself, I decided to take these snails in and observe their life-cycles form tiny mollusks to the lumbering giants I know they will grow up to be. Housing was not an issue because, having moved the millipedes all to one large tank I now had the smaller tank Caryn presented me for my birthday "free" and it is here that the snails are being housed. As one might imagine, they are rather "uneventful" animals that wake up all night and sleep all day. Never was a metaphor more apt than the term "snail's pace" because they really are rather slow... except, of course, when they are eating.  I feed the snails on a mixture of live greens (sprouted budgie seeds) and slices of fruit (mainly apple) dusted with cuttlefish bone as a source of calcium and boy can they eat fast!!! In fact these snails can eat twice the amount of apple in just two nights than a colony of 19 Madagascar hissing roaches take to finish in 3 days. And then some! I predict that if anything, the development of these snails would be most interesting to observe indeed. 

Snails having dinner

And doing other snail-ish things, I suppose. 

Cheers,
Cyren