Dawn of the Mutants

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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?

February 18, 2008. experiments, homing snails, mutation, science, superheroes. Leave a comment.