Snails Suck Succulents

Posted on April 10, 2006 in Creatures Possessions

….and when they went after my Zipper Plant, that was the call for moluscicide. The snails we have in these parts do not properly come from California. They are interlopers, escargot on the hoof, more fit for the frying pan than the petting zoo. About half a century ago, a man in Riverside brought a few to herd so he could eat them. They escaped his backyard ranch and quickly spread all over Southern California. I ignored them until they came after my cactus and succulent collection.

The Zipper Plant was disappearing in pieces, a chunk at a time. Given that it was the only thornless plant in the pot, I ascribed the loss to some native wildlife — a skunk, a raccoon or perhaps a possum. All of these have every right to be here. So I decided to let them have the zipper plant and, when they had chewed it to the ground, replace my beauty with something with spines. Oh my poor little African, I sighed. I never knew you were but a cucumber inside.

Two nights ago, I came back in the dark and beheld seven snails clinging to the surface of my spineless cactus. I picked them off and threw them at the street in anger. These tiny whirring teeth had reduced my drought resistant glories to chomped off arms. I checked the tortured remnants of my plant for more of the aggressive gastropods and resolved a dark revenge.

I do not pity garden snails. First, they are foreigners. They don’t speak the language and they don’t even bother to try to learn. Second, they eat what I prize. Third, they are abominations. A biology book I own states that the chief achievement of the snail is that it has managed to find a way to pack a gastro-intestinal system into a spiral. In you and me, food goes in our mouth, down our gut, and out the old bunghole. A mostly straight line with the intake and outtake valves widely separated. When you have a body that spirals, the food goes in and in and in. I think the snail is yet another fine example of the lack of intelligent design. A reasonable engineer called upon to develop such a creature would have put the discharge unit on the side of the beast. But this is not what happened. Food goes in. It winds through the coil and then doubles back! When the gut has finished getting nourishment, it pushes the residue out through an orifice which is next to the mouth.

Would you date someone like that?

Those of you of a conservative stripe will be alarmed to hear that snails practice same-sex unions. They are hermaphroditic. This means that no matter whether a snail is a mommy or a daddy, it will be mating with another snail of the same sex. Well, you conservatives already are out to destroy snails and anything else that is part of the environment. My fellow liberals, just accept my word that they are slimy, nasty and eaters of defenseless succulents.

I don’t kill snails because they are hermaphrodites. Snails die when they eat what is mine. You do not fuck with my succulents.

Angry about the brazen munching upon my unarmed and undefended succulent, I went to Home Depot yesterday. I sought the poisons — that section of the garden shop I hate most because of that bitter odor that reminds me of a boring life listening to Christian radio somewhere in Kansas. A place where deep furrows leeched up tormenting salts. If I so much as licked a crystal of any of these assassin-chemicals, I could find myself on a diet of charcoal with a tube crammed down my throat. I had to get out of there, in part because I was beginning to believe that my proximity to all that insecticide and herbicide would allow the nastiness to creep through my skin and into my central nervous system.

But I could not leave without my tac nuke. In less than a minute, I saw exactly what I needed. A yellow bag labeled “Slug and Snail Death”. And a small white circle that read “Good for Vegetable Gardens”. I bought it, took it home, and spread it with a shovel. Then I spent half an hour gargling and spitting the metallic taste out of my mouth.

This morning, I counted fifteen enemy casualties who ate of the dust and perished. It never got as far as their anus, so the devils never got to savor the taste of their last meal twice.