Megan Storey

“A U.S. Department of Agriculture's snail-farming bulletin notes that confined snails may form an aggregate, their combined strength and skills resulting in a breakout. I thought of hundreds of snails packed densely
into shipping crates, en route to a restaurant where escargots grace the menu and boiling water awaits. With one purpose in mind, they join forces, push up with their muscular heads against the top of the crate, and pop the lid right off, gliding slowly but steadily toward freedom.”
― Elisabeth Tova Bailey, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating

“One spring, in a rain shower, I dug up all my tulips in full bloom and wandered around the yard holding them by their two-foot necks, with the bulb and roots dangling down and the tulip flowers staring up at me with their big Cyclops-like eyes. I decided, based on color, just where to relocate each one. If you move plants in the rain, they hardly even know it, and they did just fine. Today is a perfect snail-letting-go day.”
― Elisabeth Tova Bailey, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating

“This restricted my entertainment to the calm of Gregorian chants at a barely audible level. I wondered if the snail could sense the vibrations through the air, and what the Benedictine monks would think of singing to a gastropod.”
― Elisabeth Tova Bailey, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating

“We, this people, on this mote of matter
In whose mouths abide cankerous words
Which challenge out very existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness”
― Maya Angelou, A Brave and Startling Truth