Designer Snail

Working at the Glebe, working with flowers, we have ample opportunity to appreciate the little things. Like this snail, this ‘designer snail’ as Anne called it. Those stripes would make this shell a treasure if found on a Red Sea beach, but this snail was in the wrong place, eating the wrong plants …

I remember, years ago, reading an article where a science teacher was desperately trying to account for the very different shell patterns of this species in terms of Darwinian evolution; some even have no stripes at all. She seemed to be saying that they must be of some evolutionary benefit or they would not still exist.

Well, the humans at the Glebe admired the creature. But don’t tell the Jehovah’s Witnesses that we called it a designer snail!

Be kind to your hairy little friends

Let’s make this a small picture for you arachnophobes! This is a plea to be kind to the spiders that cannot get out of the bath. It’s that time of year. Don’t try to scoop them up in your hand or a cup, just drape a towel so that one end rests inside on the bottom of the bath. Then she can climb out when she’s ready.

Of course, a true arachnophobe can then worry in case the hairy little creature is in the folds of the towel when you come to dry yourself…