RIP Roxy :'( and now Foxy, too

[pinkunicorn]

One of my aspersas has died. She'd been sitting on a salad leaf from yesterday, and I just picked her up and saw her foot just out and the mantle nowhere to be seen. No reaction to touch or water. She's gone.

She and the three others are, and were, my darlings, since they kept me company last fall and winter when I was recovering from surgery. It is a sad day.

I'll return her to the flowerpot where she came from tomorrow.

[shaydeesnail]

Rest in peace Roxy!
Very sorry for your loss, it's always sad when our friends have to leave us.
I hope you're doing okay! X

[pinkunicorn]

Thanks. I thought I'd gotten used to my molluscs dying given it's every other day I've found a dead slug in the slugarium recently, as they're growing middle-aged for their species (I suspect the ones that have died so far are the ones that have been active in laying eggs)... but Roxy's been with me the longest and she had a name. I think she was the oldest of my aspersas, though, given how worn her shell was/is. So whilst they all are dear to me, some have a special place in my heart.

I asked my partner to do the dirty deed of parting her soft body from the shell, as I want to keep her shell. I've never actually seen an uncooked snail's full body and I have to say it's quite interesting especially where the whorl begins. Roxy was buried under a goji berry plant without her shell now. I like to think she wouldn't mind me keeping a memory, if she could consider such a matter. I also need it to draw her unique patterns in the picture I started drawing. "A Portrait of a Snail".

A rough sketch, posed by a random snail I found googling. I like the "face buried in flowers in a tree" thing, it's almost like a flower cloud, which suits Roxy well now. I'm going to scan and do the final image digitally, though.

[ilovegals7]

so sorry to hear about this ! RIP ROXY p:s i love the name roxy

[shaydeesnail]

What a beautiful picture! Roxy would be flattered.
I don't think she'd mind you keeping her shell, I plan to keep my snails' shells too when the time comes x

[pinkunicorn]

The third of my four original aspersas passed away a few days ago. Foxy had been growing old and weak for about half a year, though she was eating and enjoying life still. But now the old lady gave up and moved to the big cucumber fields beyond. Baby and the newest adult aspersa Doxy still have the company of four unnamed toddlers though. RIP little Foxy.

[shaydeesnail]

Rest in peace Foxy The three of them are together now, at least. It sounds to me like she had a long and fulfilling life
*Hugs*

[4sticks]

RIP Roxy,
i bet she having a snail-party in the big cucumber fields with my 2 Busters that passed away on Saturday

[pinkunicorn]

Oh yes, they're eating the juiciest and most flavourful cucumbers ever known to snailkin.

[pinkunicorn]

The last one of my four original aspersas passed away some time ago. RIP Baby. You were getting so weak and small but still tried to eat.

I seem to have had a lot of deaths lately. My Deroceras slugs live a short while so there is a dead one a few times a week. But now I've had several babies die from something resembling gut extrusion or what I call "swollen mouth". It's quite sad to see tiny slug babes with this condition still alive, knowing they will die within hours. And I've not had lots of eggs yet unlike with the previous generation, just a few here and there. Puzzling.

I also lost two Arions, of old age. They are starting to be at the end of their year-long life cycle. The other had some problem with a lung collapsing. It had an extra hole on the wrong side for some time now but it was still eating. Yesterday I found him stiff and knew it was time. I decided to leave him die in peace though and let the others consume the body. Later his lung had collapsed entirely and, well, it is pretty gruesome but interesting to my inner biologist so I took pictures. Here, if you'd like to see. I will warn though, it is nasty. No clue how it happened but the pics were taken after I saw it get a bit worse still.

link

There can be seen how the poor thing had shrunk half the size of the others as it became old.

link

And a close up for the biologically curious. Don't click the links if you don't want to see gruesome slug death!

RIP little ones. I hope I could give you a good life while it lasted.

[shaydeesnail]

That's so sad, but there is always a silver lining! Your four aspersas are together once again. I had a good breeding colony of Lauria cylindracea, they have a short life and breed very quickly, so it was very hard to accept when they all died off quickly while not breeding enough to support the population themselves any more It's never easy to accept the harshness of nature.
That's a very strange death, for your Arion. I've never heard of that before. Thank you for the pictures though, it can be very hard for people to take these pictures, and just as hard to see, but educational and helpful too.
R.I.P to all the little snails and slugs!

[pinkunicorn]

Thank you.

It was really weird, for a few weeks he had a hole like a pneumostome on the left side of the mantle, only smaller and a bit further back on the mantle. He also had an odd hole in the bottom of the foot, like someone took a biopsy sample. Another Arion has similar and my guess is it's a kind of cancer-like cell renewal flaw that happens at the end of an animal's lifecycle as telomeres run out and mutations and cell death start kicking in good. The still-sliming slug though seems to have healed somewhat. But how the tiny hole managed to expell the entire gut and other organs is weird. It happened really quick, when I gave them dinner I first saw a bubble where the organs are and next I looked it was like that. This morning the body had shrunk to the size of a baby (!) which is more than I expected, compared to what happens to the smaller slugs after death. I wonder just how much water is there in a slug? Apparently different amounts between species seeing how others shrink so much more proportionally.