Mister Snail
firda
Things you might not have known about snails:
Tecciztecatl, the moon god of the Aztecs, carried a large snail shell on his back.
In the wild, common snails only live about 2 to 3 years. In captivity, however, they generally live 10 to 15 years. The record is over 30 years and counting.
Snails appear to be very happy to live in captivity.
Almost all land snails are hermaphrodites.
This may explain why they are so amenable to captivity.
Snails are treyf. The Second Book of Leviticus forbids believers from eating them (along with ferrets, chameleons, lizards, and moles…just so you know).
But people do eat snails. When the French eat snails, they’re escargot; when the people of Malta eat them, they’re bebbuz; when the Spanish eat them, they’re caracoles. When Americans eat snails, the Americans are called French.
Carl Jung suggested the snail, in dreams, represented the self.
It is unknown if Jung understood almost all land snails are hermaphrodites.
The shell of a snail forms a logarithmic spiral, an organically occuring curve that appears in so many forms of nature that it was called Spira Mirabilis by 17th century Swiss mathematician Jakob Bernoulli.
There is a commercial snail farm in Elgg, Switzerland which produces more than 15,000 snails for public consumption.
Snails raised on snail farms are omitted from studies examining the life span of snails in captivity.
William Shakespeare mentions snails in three of his plays, and in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland a fish invites a snail to dance.
The snail refused.
Snails hibernate in the winter and estivate in the summer. In the fall they read their favorite books and in the spring they go to Ft. Lauderdale. Where they dance.
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