True to form, one appeared about half way up the door frame this morning, and has yet to move. He is in dire danger of getting his shell cracked like a nut when the security gate opens, if he doesn't up his snail's pace a bit.
They really are fascinating creatures, and the Blackberries came out for quick pics and posting onto BBM pages. GALS buck the trend of small being cute, and I can't work out why.
Their smaller cousins are regularly relocated, preferably over the neighbours wall, when discovered in the flower beds. I can't bring myself to scatter slug and snail repellent, or to smash them, but I sure as hell don't want them on my patch! Gardening in the Lowveld brings enough challenges with wildlife of the munching or slithery kind, without adding snail slime.
But when we find GALS in the courtyard, on the lawn or in the driveway, we always stop for a prolonged investigation. Perhaps a photo or two, including something for a size comparision, to entertain English family who just don't believe that we get snails that big!
We then leave them to go on their way, although we've yet to see one actually move. They seem to drop out of the sky, hang out for a bit, then disappear into thin air.
It is awfully hypocritical to enjoy their visits, but to eject their smaller kin. Somehow, GALS just don't have the "yuck" factor of a regular sized mollusc. And as we've yet to find one in the flower beds, the association of them chewing and chomping on my beloved plants hasn't happened yet!
Luckily for them, they don't like acidic foods, such as oranges or grapes. Heaven help them slurping down the limes from my Dawa tree - hell hath NO fury like a woman whose carefully nurtured limes are stolen, destroying her cocktails! Actually, the thought of tossing one of these monsters around is a bit nauseating, can you imagine the mess?!
Junk Mail turned up an interesting ad, offering 10 GALS to swop! And apparently, they make great pets, being pretty much mess free. They are, though, causing concern in the USA. Three were smuggled into Miami by a young boy, sometime in the 1960's, and subsequently released into the wild by his Grandmother.
Picture the scene - Joe and his pets arrive at Grannie's house for a visit. WIth a shriek, Grannie shows off her incredible wind up baseball arm and hurls the damn snails, complete with bucket, over the garden fence. Seven years later, 18 000 (yes, eighteen THOUSAND) GALS were happily scooching around Florida. A single female can lay 1200 eggs a year, and they destroy stucco (cement plaster to us South Africans) - guzzling it for the calcium it contains. Just as we like Sally Hansen to protect our nails, GALS relish calcium for harder shells.
It took a further 10 years, and an estimated $1 million, to get rid of them. Don't you wish you had THAT government contract, snail bashing, and paid handsomely for it!
I remember my own grannie telling me stories of eating snails and rabbit. It was hard for a baby boomer child of plenty, to imagine why, with so many good things to eat, one would ever willingly eat something as disgusting as a snail, or as cute as a bunny.
It'll be a very frosty day in hell before I eat a snail, a prawn, a mushroom, a mussel or crabmeat. And we have a rule in our house - we don't eat anything that could be a pet. Meaning that furry, cute, big earred or large eyed darlings are instantly named, putting them firmly on the protected list!
Placed in an untenable situation once -a friends house for dinner, with said friend excitedly boiling the crayfish he'd caught on holiday - I was advised by a sympathetic fellow guest to smother the thing in peri peri sauce, and swallow fast. Hence I don't buy that story of the garlic sauce served on snails tasting so good. If that were the case, why not ladle sauce onto a bread stick?
However, my gran was a child during WW1, and raising a family on rations during WW2, so I guess protein was protein, pass the horseradish please. I suppose if the worst happens, we can feed the GALS on lettuce, marinade them in Nando's peri peri sauce and slug them down our necks.
Survival belongs to the not-so-sluggish..
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