No One Knows this About Me but I Had a Pet Snail for Ten Years | by ...

No One Knows this About Me but I Had a Pet Snail for Ten Years
Okay that’s a lie, a very, and I emphasise very limited number of people know this about me. It’s not something I tend to share openly in everyday conversation due to the questions and odd looks that usually follow. When I say ‘pet snail’, I’m not talking about your bog-standard, everyday garden snail. My snail was a giant African land snail, reaching around 20cm in length with a shell the size of an adult’s fist. Sounds terrifying right? He was harmless really.
In case any of you are wondering, which I’m sure you aren’t, giant African land snails are legitimate legal pets in the UK. This may seem obvious given their slow and gentle nature, however owning an African land snail is an illegal offence in some countries including the US due to their ‘potential as a devastating invasive species’. They are widely viewed as destructive in nature, with the ability to cause extensive damage to important food crops and agricultural land if released into the wild. In 1966, a Floridian boy allegedly smuggled three African land snails into America, and within seven years of their realise into his garden there were more than 18,000 of them in circulation, costing the Florida state ten years and $1 million in an effort to eradicate the species. This may seem difficult to comprehend, but given that African land snails are hermaphrodites, laying 200 eggs on average every 2–3 months, their release into the wild was a plausible cause for concern.
I acquired my snail in 2007 and I use ‘acquire’ intentionally as a giant African land snail was never a pet I aspired to have as an eleven year old girl. My first encounter with Gary, named after the snail character from the American animated television show Spongebob Squarepants, was both spontaneous and unexpected. I had been invited to accompany my aunty to one of her hippie friend’s house one evening, who just so happened to have over 100 baby snails all needing homes as a result of her two snails breeding (unaware that snails are hermaphrodites and should not be housed together- should’ve done your research, duh). By the end of the night I was packed up ready to leave with a pierced plastic box filled with soil, containing four snails. Initially I was fond of my four mollusc babies, but on reflection I am grateful that survival of the fittest kicked in and only Gary made it to adulthood.
Gary was my first pet. I had other pets, dogs, cats and chickens but as constantly reminded by my parents, he was my snail, my responsibility. I didn’t hold much hope for his life expectancy, considering that the other three snails died within days. But as the weeks passed on, and then the months, and then the years, I began to realise that Gary was going to be around for a little longer than I had anticipated.
Gary made a good pet. He was gentle, affectionate and fiercely loyal, not that he had much chance of escaping from me moving at a rate of about an inch a minute on a good day. We shared the good times, catching the rays of afternoon sunshine in the garden with him on the grass beside me, and then the bad times. I refer to the bad times as two instances of near-death experiences including the time I left him on the grass not realising my dad had put weed killer down that morning, and the other time my dog managed to get hold of him thinking he was some kind of oddly shaped ball. Luckily no harm was done; it was only onwards and upwards from there.
Unfortunately in the September of 2017 Gary’s life came to an end. On many occasions I was lead to believe Gary had passed, especially within the first few years as he would hibernate for up to six months at a time. My grandmother claims to have nearly thrown him in the bin once thinking he had died whilst we were on holiday abroad, as you may have gathered she’s not the biggest animal-lover. He was ten years old, which is remarkable given that giant African land snails have a life expectancy of around 5–7 years. My dad kindly buried him in the chicken run whilst I was at work and comforted me with “now he will never be alone”. RIP Gary, you were a good boy.