Dawn of the Mutants
Gary the Snail from SpongebobThe only non-Magic Roundabout popular culture
snail left for me to reference
For the nine years we have lived in the House of the Flying Martinis we have shared our garden with an incredibly huge colony of snails.
This would be fair enough if they didn’t treat our summer plants like an expensive buffet laid on especially for them.
Normally, the population of snails would be controlled in a naturally harmonic fashion by lots of hungry birds. One problem with that though: no sane bird will ever come into our garden because of these three beasts.
Lulu
Libby (personally responsible for killing
last year’s first robin. Merry Bloody Christmas)
Harley Boy (He’s sixteen you know. Likes a sparrow or two)
Remember how no birds would fly over Hiroshima for years after the blast? Well our garden’s like that. So, we’ve effectively got a bird-free snail sanctuary.
The History
Last year the snails were the subject of two blog posts. You can read them here and here, but I do realise that folk often can’t be bothered clicking on links so I’ll summarise:
Post 1.
I talked about the fact that I was convinced that my humane snail population control method of sticking hundreds of the slimy beasts in a bucket and re-homing them in the field at the bottom of the street wasn’t working. The reason I thought this was that, no matter how many hundreds of snails I emptied in the field, within days, hundreds seemed to be back in my garden. Some even had knives and forks.
I surmised that I clearly had homing snails who would sneak back under the cover of darkness.
Post 2.
I decided to put my scientific theory to the test by painting yellow numbers on the shells of the one footed prodigals, stick them in the field and await their return. Some of my readers even picked the number of snail they reckoned would come back to the House of the Flying Martinis first.
Misssy and slimy friends, June 2007Place your bets now!
In fact, the stories of the snails got quite a few of you excited, and netted me quite a few new readers as a result.
To date, I have not delivered on the results of the experiment. I can only apologise. But with these guys being snails and all, nothing is going to happen very fast. So I thank those Misssives Readers who have hung about, for their patience.
Young Frankenstein…also had some problems with his scientific experiments
The reason there has been no update so far is mainly because no numbered snails have re-appeared in the garden.
No…. something much more terrifying has happened.
The Evidence
For the past week Sonny the dog and the cats have been bringing in gargantuan snail shells. Six in all. These shells are easily five time the mass of the previous snails. They are quite startling.
See pound coin in the middle for scale.
Spookily, none of the shells have contained snails…and today it is my mission to find a monster living snail. Misssy A, my sister, is going to help (i.e: stand behind me with a baseball bat in case one tries to eat me).
Mutation, you say?
Fellow mutant, Dr David Bannerman
How has this mutation happened? It’s maybe too early to tell, but here are my theories:
Theory 1:The Mad Scientist Theory
These are actually the returning numbered snails. The yellow paint has made them superhero snails by dint of its chemical properties reacting with their snail juice.
The snails are potential Marvel Comic book heroes who have developed their powers through some kind of chemical reaction just like Peter Parker and Dr David Bannerman.
If it could happen with a spider, then why not a snail? (Might not be as effective fighting crime though…
Snail Girl: “Fighting crime with slime!” (I can’t believe Stan Lee’s not returning my calls)
Theory 2: The Global Warming Theory.
You’ve got to factor the Global warming in. Al Gore says so.
Theory 3: The Revenge Theory.
The snails from last year are now homeless and angry. Destitute snails living a poor existence and bent on revenge have sent their big cousins round to menace me.
An artist’s impression of Misssybeing menaced by a killer snail.
Theory 4: The Theory of Natural Selection/ Survival of the Fittest*.
The snails that live in the garden have realised in order to stay in the garden they have to be a match for me and have been pumping iron in readiness for this year’s snail relocation offensive. They may even have used steroids (which is illegal under snail law, btw).
To date, multiple calls to David Attenborough and Springwatch** are unanswered.
* I cannot claim this theory as my own…some bearded bloke called Chas Darwin did that ages ago after riding round the world on a Beagle. He got into trouble with his local minister as well. i don’t need that.
** But who wants Bill Oddie in their house, anyway?
Return of the Homing Snails
Actual snail porn
It’s taken nine months, but I’ve an update on the Flying Martini snail situation.
To summarise; I did an experiment to see if I could train snails like homing pigeons.
Kinda.
Read the posts I did here and here (with pics) if you don’t know what I’m on about, and I’ll fill you in on the news tomorrow.
If the snails don’t get me first, that is.
Snails Go Home!
It’s wet up North.
It’s the first of flipping July and it’s like that John Carpenter film, “The Fog”. Why? Because it’s all foggy, silly!
Anyway mist and fog are primo snail hunting conditions. Yes, you thought I was just making it up about the Let’s Find Out if We Have Homing Snails Experiment. All mouth and no trousers, you thought. (Note to new readers, you may have to click the link to understand, I’m too lazy to summarise).
Not at all, I have yellow (non-toxic, animal rights activist) paint and brush (not made from badger hair, animal rights activists) and I’m ready to number the snails and relocate. I tell you, it’s not as straightforward as it might seem, painting numbers on snails. As Julia Robert’s character, Vivien, in “Pretty Woman” so rightly said, they are, “Slippery little suckers!”
Meet Linford and Zola
Anyway, I’ve numbered and rehomed about 40 of them. To be honest, not all shells were big enough for numbers and I just put a yellow splodge. I also managed to do this before Male Neighbour I’m Not That Keen On came out and questioned my sanity.
So now…we sit and wait.
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Talking of Mist and Fog…a wee true story for you told to me by my sister-in-law about a friend of hers (it’s always a friend of a friend, isn’t it?). Let’s call the friend Angie. (Shhh! I suspect it was my sister in law…)
Angie is driving home from work along a country road. It is still light but the weather is quite bad. All of sudden she sees a cop car behind her. The cop car switches on the blue lights.
“What the blazes?” she thinks, and pulls over.
An older policeman comes up to the driver’s window and she winds it down to see what he wants.
He utters no greeting. He simply says, “What do we do when Mister Fog appears?”
“Patronising Bastard. Do I look like a 4 year old? I’m not having this” she thinks.
So she looks him straight in the eye and says, very sarcastically, “Well Officer, I’d put Mister Headlights on…”
The policeman looks at her, not quite understanding. Then he looks a little bit annoyed.
“Madam, let me re-phrase that. What should you do when Fog or Mist appears?”
She didn’t need to put her headlights on after that, as her burning cheeks lit the way home.
