Slugs with shells, right?
Prior to moving to my current condo complex, my experience with snails was reasonably limited. If I had to give my best estimate, I'd say the number of encounters with naturally-occurring snails in my lifetime did not reach a dozen.
It was rare enough, in fact, that I so very clearly remember one incident:
Several of us were leaving work, and someone noticed a snail. We crouched down and admired its shell, its translucent body, its stocky antennae. We'd barely gotten over our fascination and stood up when another coworker came out of the building.
"Look! A snail!" someone said as Val walked to join us on our way to the parking lot.
"Oo, where?" she asked excitedly, just as her foot came down with a crunch. "OH NO!"
We all gasped in horror. Our unusual little friend had met his end.
Which is in stark contrast to my current snail experience. For some strange, aligning-of-the-cosmos reason, our condo complex is a mecca for snails. It varies by the time of year, of course, but I don't think I've spent a single day where I haven't seen at least several snails.
And quite often, it's like navigating a mine field. Take this morning, for example. Now, given, it rained a little last night, which may or may not have some bearing on the number of snails. But just in the first five minutes of my walk with Chloe, I counted over a hundred snails. And those are just the ones in my direct field of vision along the sidewalk. I stopped counting at a hundred, and continued our walk.
I try very hard not to squish any, which results in spending most of the time walking with my eyes glued to the path in front of me.
And snails are weird! They congregate around fallen (squashed) comrades. Their shiny, gooey trails wiggle and wind in unusual patterns across the sidewalk. And our snails come in all sizes--from teeny-tiny, barely visible little guys to big, mature adult snails.
I wish I knew what it was about this particular location that attracts what seems to be all of California's snail population.
