"Snailsville" Population 6

This summer Ashton and Dallin played a lot with the Ockey boys, Jared and Owen. One day after playing together, they showed up at our house with a few garden snails out of Tamra's (Jared & Owen's mom) garden. I thought they would just watch them for a while and then let them go. Well a day later, and 2 snails more, I realized they were serious about keeping them.

To avoid the "cool-whip carton coffin" fate for the snails, we searched the internet for instructions on how to care for them and went to Petsmart for a real "cage" for the snails.

Yes, I know, I am a pushover.

We enjoyed watching the snails, they were easy to care for, and Ashton took care of them really well... until the newness wore off. Then they were just stinky and one more thing that I had to worry about.

As it got closer to fall and cold weather I kept asking him to release them so they would have time to burrow before it got too cold. My pleas fell on deaf ears, until about a month ago when Ashton came to me and said he was going to release the snails. I WAS ESTATIC! I was finally going to be rid of "Snailsville".

We were discussing where to release them when Ashton looking in their container said, "What are are those little things? (Pause) Oh my gosh, those are babies!!!"

Sure enough, I looked in and there were what seemed to be a million little snails everywhere! There were really only 48, but that put "Snailsville's" population up to 62!

It was then, I thought either God hates me or He must really enjoy a good practical joke.

Now that babies were involved, Ashton's argument became that they would never survive the winter, so we needed to keep them until spring!! Of course, our reply was- No Way! If one could have babies then the others could too and what would I do with hundreds of baby snails in the middle of winter!

He mulled it over for a few weeks and last Saturday he released all but 6 snails. The lucky six- three big and 3 baby snails. Not exactly what I had in mind, but a compromise I could make.

A top view of "Snailsville" and the lucky 6.

It was a good thing he released them when he did, because when we cleaned out their container there were 2 big egg clusters buried in the dirt containing about 60 eggs each.

The buried egg clusters. (The white masses in the middle of the pic.)

I sincerely hope that we have a baby free winter, but if not and you get the hankering for escargot I know where you can get some snails real cheap!