Free The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey

protects it from those who hunt by sound.
Being slimy is a complex defense system that goes well beyond the ability to repel a Homo sapiens. Large predators can’t get a grip on a slippery creature, and smaller parasitic insects may get stuck in the ooze or have their mouth parts gummed up. If the usual slime recipe isn’t enough of a deterrent, a special batch with particularly toxic and bad-tasting chemicals can be copiously produced on the spot. For a gastropod, survival of the fittest often means survival of the slimiest.
One well-evolved passive defense was evident in the way my snail’s earth-colored shell blended into its environment. I was constantly nonplussed by how the snail could vanish right in front of my eyes against the terrarium’s flora, even when it was moving.
Then there was my snail’s brilliant strategy of elusively changing its sleeping spots. It might be on its side, drawn into its shell beneath a fern frond, and thus not visible from above; or nestled against a rotting branch the color of its shell; or in a crevice, hidden by a bit of lichen. It was amazing how the snail, with virtually no sight, found such perfect hiding spots.
It was in Tony Cook’s chapter in The Biology of Terrestrial Molluscs, titled “Behavioural Ecology,” that I found the sentence that best expresses a snail’s way of life: “The right thing to do is to do nothing, the place to do it is in a place of concealment and the time to do it is as often as possible.”
    E VERYTHING ABOUT a snail is cryptic, and it was precisely this air of mystery that first captured my interest. My own life, I realized, was becoming just as cryptic. From the severe onset of my illness and through its innumerable relapses, my place in the world has been documented more by my absence than by my presence. While close friends understood my circumstances, those who didn’t know me well found my disappearance from work and social circles inexplicable.
Yet it wasn’t that I had truly vanished; I was simply homebound, like a snail pulled into its shell. But being homebound in the human world is a sort of vanishing. When encountering acquaintances from the past, I sometimes see a look of astonishment cross their face, as if they think that they are seeing my ghost, for I am not expected to reappear. At times even I wonder if a ghost is what I’ve become.

16. AFFAIRS OF ASNAIL
    The emotional natures of snails, as far as love and
affection are concerned, seem to be highly developed,
and they show plainly by their actions, when courting,
the tenderness they feel for each other.
    — J AMES W EIR , The Dawn of Reason, 1899
    O NE MORNING I looked into the terrarium and was surprised to see a cluster of eight tiny eggs. They were on the surface of the soil, just under the edge of the birch log, and were the color and size of pearl tapioca. I wondered if they were fertile and if they would hatch. I watched with interest as the snail visited the egg site every few days to tend them. On several occasions, the snail appeared to hold each egg in its mouth for a little while to “slime” it, or so I presumed, and thereby keep it at the right moisture for hatching.
Woodland snails are hermaphrodites. While rare among mammals, this characteristic is common in the majority of other animal groups and in the plant kingdom as well. A snail may find a partner randomly or show a preference for age or size. They mate in late spring, early summer, or fall, after an elaborate and complex courtship. A terrestrial snail that has been isolated for a while can, rather conveniently, self-fertilize, thus founding a new colony and ensuring the survival of its genes.
By chance, the previous year, I had watched the sensuous scene of two Burgundy snails courting in a French meadow in the film Microcosmos, directed by the scientists Claude Nuridsany and Marie Pérennou. Bruno Coulais’ original music composition “L’amour des escargots” provides an operatic backdrop to