Snail

No, not another garden snail!

My apologies for snails again after yesterday's mass but this one is special. I brought it back the other day from near the top of the downs to blip and it's time to release it back into its environment. It's not far, even by snail terms, to walk up the hill behind the house but I'll be nice and give it a lift. If you go back to yesterday you can see it clearly on the bottom left of my number 2. It is by far the largest snail.

Somewhere between AD 43 and AD 410, someone in the Roman Legion decided that England was short of good food. To enhance, what must have been considered a pretty monotonous diet, they brought some extra-large snails (Helix pomatia) from the continent to grace the officer's tables. A few escaped, serendipitously in the right place, and began to breed.
The Roman Snail as it is now called, or Escargot if it's on a plate, didn't go as far as the officers it fed but, today they are mostly found close to routes the Romans used and their installations. Roman Snails are fussy as to where they like to live. Chalk soil is essential, so they live only along the Downs and in a few small pockets around the south of England.

Of course, there is another version that says they were introduced in the 1600's but, that would ruin my tale!

This is a good sized example but, not the largest wild snail I've found. This species was placed on the IUCN 'red list' of threatened and endangered species in January 2009. In the UK they are protected by law under the Wildlife and Countryside Act, 1981. Recently, there has been a spate of idiots enterprising people who are trying to collect them to sell to restaurants around the Britain. Snails can be farmed but not as easily as you may think. The damp weather this year has made finding the wild ones straightforward. A Wildlife officer has told me that they are spot checking regularly to stop thefts and are prosecuting numerous attempts to collect snails for profit..
For those who would like a bit of sauce with their Escargot, snail sex is unusual. Snails are hermaphrodite and simultaneously fertilise each other. The couple in lust circle each other, raise the front part of their bodies enabling them press their slimy soles against each other remaining almost upright. They then shoot a love dart into one another and remain in a loving embrace for anything up to 24hrs.
Everybody say ahhhhhhh!

Nuff about snails... back with something completely different tomorrow!

I might change this photo later.. I had a better one!