August 21, 2008

Discovered - The snails that hid from history. "For the past 110 years, a colony of snails has managed to crawl unnoticed from an imported stone balustrade brought from Italy in the 1890s, to claim a piece of British territory up to the terrace of the house just 27m (88ft) away." [Via]
posted by homunculus 16 years ago
  • They good eatin'?
  • "I don't know, it all happened so fast, Officer!" A guy goes to a Halloween party with a girl on his back. The host asks him, "And what are you?" The guy says, " I'm a snail." The host says "And who's that on your back?" "That's Michelle!" "Look at that S-car-go!!!"
  • They good eatin'? Sure, if you can catch 'em.
  • Don't eat them! They are amazing and ambitious, and also very cute.
  • Considering the Snail The snail pushes through a green night, for the grass is heavy with water and meets over the bright path he makes, where rain has darkened the earth's dark. He moves in a wood of desire, pale antlers barely stirring as he hunts. I cannot tell what power is at work, drenched there with purpose, knowing nothing. What is a snail's fury? All I think is that if later I parted the blades above the tunnel and saw the thin trail of broken white across litter, I would never have imagined the slow passion to that deliberate progress. --Thom Gunn
  • To A Snail Marianne Moore If “compression is the first grace of style”, you have it. Contractility is a virtue as modesty is a virtue. It is not the acquisition of any one thing that is able to adorn, or the incidental quality that occurs as a concomitant of something well said, that we value in style, but the principle that is hid: in the absence of feet, “a method of conclusions”; “a knowledge of principles”, in the curious phenomenon of your occipital horn.
  • I was trying to get kidlet #2 to consider the snail today, but she just squealed and ran away. I think I am raising a wuss.
  • Hopefully, she will outgrow it. My daughters and granddaughters all went through a worm/bug/small and squirmy "oh oh disgusting, icky" and must-be-screeched-about stage. Only one GD is still weird about spiders, wasps, bees, and ants. Granted, she was bitten by ants, but that eventually engendered stomping fits in the others rather than unholy terror and running about with her hands in the air. I loath the wasps with a terrible passion also, and those buggers swarm and HURT, so that's understandable. (Four inch Portland, Oregon snails in your sleeping bag is not a favorite of mine, also.)
  • I remember those slugs in Portland. I think they are orange colored, which goes nicely with the green, mossy stone walls!