Garden Snails

Some kids have a special attachment to a blanket. Mine have been carrying around snails, just two, until this morning. Ryan worked late but when he got home he went downstairs, as he always does before he goes to bed, to check on the kids. Stuart was sitting up in bed crying about a snail who "snailed" away. Ryan, unaware that Stuart has been sleeping with a garden snail for the last few days, coaxed him back to bed.

This morning, Stuart remembered things differently. He told me that Daddy had stolen his snail. I assured him that his Daddy would do no such thing. (I wondered if Daddy, who was still sleeping and unavailable for questioning, actually had found a snail slithering across his sleeping child's face and thrown out--gasp--the beloved.)

We moved furniture and found the creature clinging upside down to the the bottom of Stuart's bed. Not real impressed spending my first waking half hour searching for a snail, I put extra effort into convincing Stuart and Alison that the snails should go out. "They really, REALLY miss their friends. I think we should put them outside."

I congratulated myself, thinking I had won the battle as they marched outside. Luckily, they found all of the snails' friends... and sisters, and brothers, and lost acquaintances. They were amenable to coming into the house to socialize.

Ryan woke up to this.



Followed by Alison giving each snail a soothing bath in my sink and drying them off with my good linens.

Sick.