Snail-ee Love

Many people are remembering Jess's love of frogs. Before frogs it was Snails! For at least a year she was obsessed! She was 3 years old.

Here are some of the #StuffMyGirlSays moments about this time: 

Introducing me to a new garden snail she found, "Mommy that Mr. Snail-ey is so funny. He just told me a little joke about a little camel."

P.S. Jessica did not choose to share the camel joke. "It was just for me!"

Our backyard soon turned into a laboratory of snail discoveries. She would burst in to share her latest findings: "Mom guess what?! Snails don't like noodles but they LOVE cauliflower!!!"

Jess was so smitten with her snails that she began giving them house tours. At one point, she even told a lucky snail, "This is where I sleep. If Mommy lets you, you can too!" At this point, we knew we needed a terrarium.

As time goes on, I actually swap the snails out after a couple of weeks of captivity (we find them all over the neighborhood) I think it is a reasonably fair trade. They get to delight Jessie and eat the carrot rich diet we offer (their orange poop indicative of their enjoyment -- we offer other stuff too but they LOVE the carrots!) be manhandled a bit, and then released full bellied back into the wild... my local gardening friends may prefer otherwise but after spending a few weeks with us they really are our friends!

One day, Jess rushed over to me, giggling, "The snail-ey guys are being so funny. They are in a pile on a stem… come see!" Little did we know this “pile” had resulted in 75+ eggs buried at the bottom of the terrarium. Soon enough, our own snail nursery was crawling with over 25 baby snails—and potentially 50 more still to hatch. It felt like National Geographic right in our living room!

Jessie thinks we should keep them all. "They were born here. They love us!"

The amount of poop 75+ snails, itty bitty as they are, was nearly immediately overwhelming. The ecosystem was rancid within a couple of days so we were forced to release them all into the back yard.

A few other snail related tails:

Can you say STUBBORN! I told her she needed to wash her hands after playing with her snail pets... 20 minutes later she is sitting on the stool in her bathroom still not washing her hands!

Kathy is the proud mommy to four slugs... "They're just like my snail-eys only without a shell." How could I refuse?

LOL leave it to my snail lovin' girl! I left her alone with my tablet and she finds a site with a snail circus going on... I think we have our next few afternoons worked out!!

Jess also insisted I paint her snaily friends (not their shells! But an actual painting.)