It was intended to be a sequel to the “in the dark post” below. I have become quite enamored of crawling around on hands and knees in the yard at night with a flashlight and my camera. A benevolent voyeur attempting to glimpse beneath Gaia’s cloak of darkness to ferret out a few mysteries hidden thereunder.
I started my adventure where the other post ended, head at ground level, gazing at Gaia’s Gastropods as they chomped away at decay, unfortunately sometimes not stopping at rot but continuing their feasts on perfectly healthy and sometimes prized flora.
I watched for a while between shots, my flash didn’t seem to interrupt the snails, they went on about their business and as I am want to do, I dizzed out connecting whatever image was before me with catalogued thoughts. The type neatly tucked away awaiting whatever unlikely triggers are needed to pull them from the library – in this case the unsuspecting trigger person was a snail.
This is the point where observers of the observer will note how easily and readily impressed with small wonders he is. Of course that would be a pleasant euphemism for noticing the observer has the attention span of a gnat suffering from ADD. But I would have it no other way – it’s what makes me susceptible to capture by beauties unseen by most regardless of how unusual, how unlikely, how small, how hidden, unbidden, or hard ridden the beauty – you get the point.
So where was I? Oh yeah, how easily distracted I can be sometimes. While on hands and knees spying on snails in the dark, I was reminded of when my son (who is celebrating his 18th birthday today), was in middle school. My son, quite the entrepreneur, responded to his science teacher's request for large garden snails. He immediately saw the win-win between my ongoing battles against the snails eating my garden and his science teacher's offer of a bounty of 25 cents per snail.
Among other things, you should be asking yourself, “What market phenomena could lead to such an inflated price for garden snails.” Duh! The answer is so obvious – 911 – not so obvious you say? Well let me back up a step or two and explain why the science teacher wanted the snails. It seems large garden snails are in fairly high demand in science class rooms across the country. The snail’s cerebral ganglion is a rudimentary precursor to mammal, bird and reptile brains. Despite its simple level of function, snails are capable of certain types of associative learning and their abilities are readily tested with the most basic lab equipment. This makes snails a great subject of research and a relatively non controversial subject for cognitive and other experiments that scientists, children, science minded children and childish scientists can all understand.
Middle school experiments range from determining if a snail can learn from experience to avoid obstacles or other dangers. One experiment sought to determine if a snail could figure out that crawling across a certain texture, sandpaper in this case, would always lead to food while crawling across smooth tile led toward deadly salt. The dumber snails didn’t learn as salt tends to dissolve the snail.
Another experiment tried to determine if a controlled calcium enriched diet could result in stronger snails – strength determined by how much weight the snail could tow up an incline board. (Lab equipment needed: one incline board, string, weights and super glue – to attach the weighted string to the snail. The more humane labs also keep fingernail polish remover on hand to dissolve the glue after the experiment is complete)
But what of 911? So as it turns out the science teachers acquired their snails from a distributor in Oklahoma. But part of the Patriot Act prohibited the interstate transport of certain biological forms. Somehow snails made it on the list, probably because they resided on a list of potential implements of agricultural terrorism along with fundamentalist boll weevils and extremist sects of thrips.
Overnight the supply of large garden snails dried up. My son not only made a killing on the local snail to scientist market and reduced the snail pest problem in my yard, he also asked me to draft a contract for him. The contract would have prohibited any purchasers of his snails from breeding the snails – he also asked me if I knew how to sterilize a snail in a way that wouldn’t diminish the value of the snail in science experiments. I blame the music industry for developing the concept of prohibiting the reproduction of CD’s -- my son readily adopted their tactics. Nevertheless and needless to say, my son can make me nervous at times.
I refused to draw up the contract and also declined to neuter any snails – this being a particularly difficult task given the fact that land snails are hermaphroditic – what would one cut???
It’s a bit cool out today, so I doubt I will crawl around tonight, but I’m sure I will again quite soon. Stay tuned to coming attractions and my next distractions .
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