SNAIL UPDATE (FOR SAMARA)
As some of you may know, as well as being an artist I am a fledgling giant snail handler. This update is primarily for Samara who was the original owner of Georgia, Ireland, Italy and Greece.
The Cocoa Fibre finally arrived today which was lucky as the terrarium dipped to 18C this morning, though the thermometer only goes down to 18C so it may have been lower (whoops), just a bit colder than central Africa yes? So while they no longer have turf (it went mouldy last week and unfortunately Maria has none spare left, its all art now) they now have what all good snail enclosures should and have a bed of lovely warm cocoa fibre to burrow into and keep them warm. They’d just had a bit of cardboard all week and had formed a sit-in protest (stayed in their shells). Now all 4 are sliding around (sliding being the technical term for their movement?) at a nice, but not perfect, 22C.
Also bit of good news, found out which part of the snail family they belong to and turns out they’re the type that don’t lay 300 eggs, they only lay 8-20, wa-hey, less genocide necessary. (snail websites recommend destroying the eggs before anyone thinks I’m a terrible person, but its still too cold for them to get jiggy so there hopefully won’t be that problem anyway)
Last week Georgia injured it/her/himself by stupidly hanging off their roof for about 24 hours. Almost got a collapsed mantle (mantle:The mantle is a muscle that holds the body to the shell and is responsible for keeping the shape of the snail inside the shell. Normally the mantle is expanded to meet the outer lip of the shell and you will see it encroaching and sometimes covering the columella.), I noticed in the evening that it hadn’t moved for ages but its stalks were waggling around quite a bit so looked round the side and there was a big white muscle popping out and it didn’t look too happy about it. Luckily I must have caught her in time as she just stayed floppy for half an hour in my makeshift snail hospital as seen above then was clearly fine as she kept tipping it over.
That’s all for the snail update. None have gone in to hibernation or estivation yet so I must be doing ok.
Oh also for some reason they’ve started munching on the calcium deposits or whatever it is on the old aquarium that must have come about when it was used for fish, seriously guys? There’s cuttlefish bone all other the place stop eating weird things and munch on your bone. They also eat their own shells and I can hear them loudly crunching round their necks (necks??) when I’m trying to sleep at night.
Lastly I said earlier that its too cold for them to breed, that’s not stopping Greece, the lecherous bugger keeps crawling (sliding?) all over the others’ shells, maybe I should show him/her Isabella Rossellini’s Green Porno (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcmYggVjNkI), sex education to prevent unwanted pregnancies?
(also next economic crash prediction: Georgia)
