SNAILS DON'T LIKE ESCARGOT

They’re back. The snails are back. I was taking my regular early morning walk on the boardwalk overlooking the S.F. bay, and there it was, a lowly member of the mollusk family gliding along at a snail’s pace, body contracting as it moved forward on a base of mucus, it’s two pair of antennae constantly alert and probing.
I had missed them. One day, some 5 or 6 months ago, they had just up and vanished. Where had they gone to? Hibernating under some rocks? Bedded down in some musty, dark cavern in a state of aestivation? Had they come out early because the sun had replaced the torrential rains? Here were questions that needed some answers. “Later”, I said, addressing the snail scout. “I imagine the rest of your crew will be out this afternoon or tomorrow morning” , I added, looking directly at the questioning antennae. There was no answer; Snails go into their shells to escape replying.

I’m a trivia freak. Here was a snail on a boardwalk six feet wide. How long I wondered, would it take the little bugger to cross it? I trembled with pioneering excitement as I gingerly picked it up, set my watch, and deposited the thing on the starting line and said “go”. The creature was off and running at a blistering pace, for snails. I kept straightening it out in that it had a tendency to wander off the beaten track. Some twelve minutes later the hard working snail crossed the finishing line. It had traveled at the rate of … at the rate of … you figure it out. There wasn’t a drop of perspiration on my lowly athelete.

Actually I could refer to “It” as “They”. That snail may have been an hemaphrodite bearing organs of both sexes. The perfect answer to marriage. Is that why snails have such a low divorce rate?

My trivia instincts were now fully aroused. Later that day I went down to the Berkeley library. There were over a dozen volumes on crustaceans. Big fat ones they were. Grown men and women had spent the better part of their lives, relentlessly, tirelessly studying every aspect of the lives and loves of this large phylum of animals, known as mollusks. I selected Grzimek’s “Mollusks and Echinoderms,” volume three. I sat down to have a good read.

I was happy to learn that the ancestor of the mollusk was probably a platyhelminthiclike creature. After pausing for breath, I looked up Webster and discovered the word meant: Much flattened worms, very much like planarians, flukes or tapeworms. Still want to dine on escargot? I read that the family is a rather large one and included seashells from ocean’s shores, snails from our gardens and local ponds, as well as clams, scallops, and squid (ugh) to name a few. Fascinating stuff, eh what? Now you can sleep.

Grzimek (You need not try to pronounce the name) explained that the family of mollusks could be found in the deepest part of the ocean under immense pressure, in all bodies of fresh water including artic pools, thermal springs, and from tropical swamps. Still others luxuriated as parasites on and within other invertebrate animals.

Know that land snails can survive years of desert heat in a state of torpor (My preferred state). Want more? Listen to this. Many solengasters, snails and adult clams, barely exceed a length of one or two mm. Were you aware that mollusks are greatly diverse in structure and are represented by many curious forms, from the highly active squids to the slow and sluggish snails, from the giant tridacna calms to the minute woodland snails living in the highest mountains? You don’t care? Shame on you.
There were lots more data on the creatures --- some 1500 pages worth, but not one item on the rate of speed of the lowly snail, or on where our local Bay area snails wander off to for a good part of the year.

The next morning I went down to the boardwalk bordering the Bay. I had a job to do. Overnight a small regiment of our local snails had come out to promenade, to luxuriate, to fraternize or
Simply to get a tan. All unaware of the imminent danger they were in. Joggers would soon be out and our lowly, slow moving friends would be pulverized in short order. With tender, loving care I picked them up, one at a time, an placed them out of harm’s way. Boy scouts could not have done a better job.

A note to escargot eaters. If you omit the buttered garlic sauce accompanying this questionable delicacy, you are left with a tasteless relative of the worm family. BON APPETIT!