Les Escargots

When I sat down to write this post, I intended to make reference to one of my favourite Tiger stories - the one wherein she tricked me into coming down to the toilet in the backyard to see something which "is not a slug mama, I promise" only to begin to laugh maniacally once I arrived and to burst into a chorus of "It is a slug mama! It is! Bwahahahaha...." For the life of me I cannot find the blog post in which I originally told that story, surely I did one??

Anyhoo, the reason I was thinking of said story was because Tiger has developed something of a fixation with the slug's less-objectionable cousin, the snail. It began, I believe, with the snail project at daycare some two years ago which had the children looking after a group of snails in a fishtank. Just recently, Tigerlily found an old anti-mosquito lamp doohicky in the backyard and appropriated it for her snail-keeping purposes. Ever since, she has had 'pet snails' which she will gladly tell you about at length should you be inspired to ask her. 

 

 

 La Casa Del Snalio

 

She makes them meals of shredded baby spinach, grass/mud soup, and the occasional vegetable which she leaves inside the little metal house. She locks the door during the day to keep the snails safe while they are sleeping (though I have occasionally had to remind her not to leave it in a sunny spot after a near fatal oversight or two). As soon as dusk arrives, she goes outside to see if the snails are awake, often taking a torch to make doubly sure. Very often, if she finds them awake in the morning, she brings them to me on the tips of her fingers with exclamations of delight and wonder at the patterns on their shells and their silvery trails.

She particularly likes the little ones and has mastered

plucking them out of their house without crushing their

delicate shells.

"He's tickling me Mama!"

Relations between Tigerlily and Wolf have been somewhat strained since he started eating the snails that he finds in the backyard. God help us if he gets a taste for teddy bears...