Status Updates From The Sound of a Wild Snail E...

Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
—RAINER MARIA RILKE, 1903, from Letters to a Young Poet, 1927

Late one winter night I wrote in my journal:

A last look at the stars and then to sleep. Lots to do at whatever pace I can go. I must remember the snarl.
Always remember the snail.

in this falling rain
where are you off to
snail?
— KoBAYASHI ISSA (1763-1828)

The original snail and I had been fellow captives, but now we had both returned to our natural habitats.

"The young one[s] emerge in a lovely bub-ble-like shell," wrote the author of "Snails and Their Houses." Their shells are translucent and "so delicate", William Kirby notes, "that a sun-stroke destroys them."

Eggs are usually laid below ground in several clutches of thirty to fifty each.

"But snails don't sit on their eggs," he explained.
"They bury them in damp earth and leave them."
"The ideal way of bringing up a family," said
Mother, unexpectedly but with immense conviction.
"I wish I'd been able to bury you all in some damp earth and leave you."