The Great Escape

Now that the sanils are bigger we need to pay more attention to cleaning them. When they were very little it was just a case of wiping down the propogator, now the propogator needs thorough washing and cleaning. We have decided that we actually need two propogators: so that as well as cleaning the plastic we can transfer the snails onto clean soil.

When we are doing the cleaning we have to be careful that the snails do not get away. Snails, in contradiction to popular myth, are fast, Very fast. They are also inquisitive. If there is somewhere to explore snails will explore it. Fiona, my wife tends to do the rounding up. Her fingers are more slender than mine and she has a more delicate touch. I am Ok with the larger ones but I worry about squashing the small ones. Fiona also has to save the snails from the attention of our three year old daughter, Amy, who takes a great deal of interest in them. Whilst this is going on I replenish the petri dishes that have the food on, wash the green leaves that we give them to eat and also clean out the perspex top to the propogator.

Because it is my job to wash the propogator I feel responsible for the great escape last night. The lid of the propogator has a vent on it in the form of a sliding switch over three large holes. We keep the switch open, but only by a fraction. However last night the vent was fully open. The holes are sufficiently big to let the smaller snails out. We found six snails on the outside. They hadn't gone far, snails will not go too far from a source of food unless it it to another source of food, but we did need to round them up and return them to the propogator. This included me on hands and knees with a torch looking for escapees.