The Giant Snail Who Came to Dinner and Breakfast and ...(Photo Essay)

The kids and I go on an evening walk around the neighborhood every week day.  Last evening we found a Giant West African Land Snail making his leasurely way down the road.  His shiny, beautifully marked shell caught my 6 year old daughter's eye.  She quickly called her 8 year old brother (Mr. Science) and we all gathered around the snail in awe.

When I say giant, I mean GIANT.  The one we saw had a shell over 7cm long and was about 12 cm from eyestalks to tail.  Once we found it, we were in a quandry to know what to do with it.  These snails are an agricultural menace and people are instructed to destroy them on sight.  They can grow to 12 inches long.  They reproduce 3 or 4 times a year and although they normally live from 3 to 5 years, some have lived as long as 9 years.  They eat over 500 different types of vegetation, including many food crops.  You can see why they aren't exactly a welcome tourist on our island.

In the end, mercy prevailed and we carried the snail the short way back to our house to a temporary home inside of a cleaned out plastic nut container (a large one of course).  We gave him a broccolli stem and watched in fascination as he immediately went to work rasping it with his rough, toothless mouth.  We noticed that when he stuck to the container, we could see the muscles in his "foot" change color as they contracted.  The effect was like a hologram.  Way cool!

So now Daddy has said they can keep it as a pet since we can't quite bring ourselves to kill it and we would never set it free to wreak havoc.  The kids are delighted.  They have named it Rover in honor of the Mars rover (that's slow too, Mom) and the fact that Rover means "wanderer" and the snail is originally from West Africa.  And of course it makes people laugh because it's a dog's name. 

My 6 year old has offered to sacrifice her veggies to feed our new pet but I told her that wouldn't be neccesary.  My oldest, almost 10, remarked, "I'll bet I'm the only boy whose first pet was a Giant African Land Snail named Rover."  Yep, son, I think you're right.