snail-killing for the aesthete

Recently I saw the largest snail I have ever seen. It was a great snail, and a modest one: drab brown in color and with a cinnamon-roll styled shell. It was about 1.25� in diameter and ever so slowly making it�s way up the outside of a low, concrete garden wall [if it was indeed moving, I didn�t actually see it move]. I was on my way to a hair appointment and decided that if the snail was still there when I returned, I would bring it home with me.

I have a long-standing interest in snails. They have filled me with intrigue for as long as I can remember. I think what made them so fascinating to me, was knowing that I couldn�t find them at home. Our farm is too dry. So, when I found them at the residences of Mom and Dad�s friends, in an irrigation pond, or at that year�s summer camp; the snails were collected, bagged, and discretely taken home�only to die a few weeks later.

Luckily for the giant snail, I was so concerned with my haircut that I completely forgot about him and took a different route home.

The next day as I walked to school, disappointed in my absentmindedness, I contemplated what I would have done if I had indeed taken the snail home. I realized that I hadn�t thought things through. So, it was a good thing that I forgot to pick him up on my way home, as he would have just made his container messy and smell snaily, and then eventually he would have died.

Since the snail would have died anyway, I set about trying to figure out how to kill a snail and not have to deal with a messy, smelly container [in the event that I ever see such a snail again on the free-range].

It�s so easy. I�d just have to put the guy in a small, salt-filled container. It�d draw all the moisture out of the muscle and the shell, and would be a relatively clean process. The result would be the magnificent shell unscratched and perfectly clean�waiting for me to be inspired as to what to do with it next: make it into a necklace, incorporate it into some art or craft, or even mount in on the wall of my living room as though it were a trophy buck.