Post by simple on Jul 11, 2018 21:14:40 GMT
Here's a very long essay about my first snail:
I was having a class and I don't know its English name, in Portuguese it's "educação tecnológica" and it's about small-scale building projects. Our teacher wanted to make a farm on the school so she told us to pull out all the plants in an area for it.
While pulling out the plants I came across a snail just sitting there, I felt sorry for it and took it with me to put it somewhere else later.
But when the time came to release it back into the wild, I felt sorry for it. Here in Portugal snails are eaten regularly during summer, and I didn't want to risk releasing a snail only for it to be boiled alive for a snack. I took it with me and put it in a tupperware and fed it only lettuce.
I named it Bob, after the flash game "Snail Bob", and got two buddies for it. Three snails in a small space on a lettuce-only diet and no substrate, it was every bit as horrible as it sounds looking back on it, but at the time I didn't know better.
There was even an incident where I broke part of the lip of its shell when it was shot out of the tupperware because I opened it a little too carelessly.
As the years passed, many snails died and others came, but Bob was always there. As I learned more about snails, I made the conditions much better, it lived in a fishbowl and later a proper tank and it ate more than just lettuce, it even lived alongside Ciclope! (Which means Ciclope himself is nearing the end of his lifespan
)
However, things took a scary turn when I saw white bugs crawling in it and the others. I didn't find anything by searching on the internet, so I went to the vet with it. I had to pay a lot more than usual because it was an "exotic animal" (one of the most common species in this country??) and only a specialized vet could take care of it. I came back with some antibiotics that seemed to have worked.
Bob was very inactive, and his body was much smaller than I remembered, it seemed too small for the shell. I gave it and the others some organic carrots and left them alone, hoping Bob would be better off if I wasn't always handling it to give the antibiotics.
But it just stood on the same place for days without even peeking out its shell, I was getting so worried. That wasn't like him at all, it was too similar to a snail's behavior when it is about to die and I didn't want my little Bob to die, I wanted to do something about it but what could I do?
One day, I checked on it, only to find its body melting inside its shell I was so heartbroken, I'm crying as I'm writing this, this snail was with me for so long, I loved it so much. RIP Bob, my very first snail
I was having a class and I don't know its English name, in Portuguese it's "educação tecnológica" and it's about small-scale building projects. Our teacher wanted to make a farm on the school so she told us to pull out all the plants in an area for it.
While pulling out the plants I came across a snail just sitting there, I felt sorry for it and took it with me to put it somewhere else later.
But when the time came to release it back into the wild, I felt sorry for it. Here in Portugal snails are eaten regularly during summer, and I didn't want to risk releasing a snail only for it to be boiled alive for a snack. I took it with me and put it in a tupperware and fed it only lettuce.
I named it Bob, after the flash game "Snail Bob", and got two buddies for it. Three snails in a small space on a lettuce-only diet and no substrate, it was every bit as horrible as it sounds looking back on it, but at the time I didn't know better.
There was even an incident where I broke part of the lip of its shell when it was shot out of the tupperware because I opened it a little too carelessly.
As the years passed, many snails died and others came, but Bob was always there. As I learned more about snails, I made the conditions much better, it lived in a fishbowl and later a proper tank and it ate more than just lettuce, it even lived alongside Ciclope! (Which means Ciclope himself is nearing the end of his lifespan
)However, things took a scary turn when I saw white bugs crawling in it and the others. I didn't find anything by searching on the internet, so I went to the vet with it. I had to pay a lot more than usual because it was an "exotic animal" (one of the most common species in this country??) and only a specialized vet could take care of it. I came back with some antibiotics that seemed to have worked.
Bob was very inactive, and his body was much smaller than I remembered, it seemed too small for the shell. I gave it and the others some organic carrots and left them alone, hoping Bob would be better off if I wasn't always handling it to give the antibiotics.
But it just stood on the same place for days without even peeking out its shell, I was getting so worried. That wasn't like him at all, it was too similar to a snail's behavior when it is about to die and I didn't want my little Bob to die, I wanted to do something about it but what could I do?
One day, I checked on it, only to find its body melting inside its shell
I was so heartbroken, I'm crying as I'm writing this, this snail was with me for so long, I loved it so much. RIP Bob, my very first snail 
but don't worry, you're not alone. I had to sat goodbye to ALL of my snails, including my first ones because I'm on vacations and cannot be home for a long time. And because of my situation the only thing I could do was to release them all.