Maybe it's not snail romance, and it might just be casual sex with a wet, slimy, sure footed stranger, but they were sure going at it, for hours (even lions take a break between each coupling). These gastropods found the globe surface, and remnant Arizona bacteria irresistible, slowly shimmying from hemisphere to hemisphere, rubbing up against one another in my back yard on Tuesday. When I figured out that they were not going to stop (hours later), I flicked them both off the glove using a stick, in mid mutually adjacent slime mode, and into the mulch bed about a meter away, where they continued to writhe around together.
I've figured out that just about everything in my neighborhood has snails in it, or on it, if it is outside. Saturday night, while walking to a neighbor's home for a friendly and raucous block party Christmas gathering, DDF (or is she Dr Orange County Flower now? hmmm) and I saw a golf ball sized snail crawling up one of those 6 foot tall inflatable snow men. There's Real Bird of Paradise flowers on the corner of our yard, and this morning I saw a snail inside one of the brilliant orange blossoms (but camera was not handy). They're on the driveway, garbage cans, and sidewalks too, leaving their shiny little trails and they seek out bird poop
It did rain, solidly, the first 6 days I was here. And, it's been foggy every morning - which burns off by 11am or so. So there's no shortage of facilitating moisture for these gastropods. The neighbors tell us this is unusual, and it is typically NOT this damp... but time will tell. The moss and algae on walls and side walks reminds me of South Carolina's perpetual "mouillure", combined with the gray, cloudy skies of the midwest.
Il faut voir. Ya veramos. We'll see...
(DDF just telephoned me coincidentally, and said she's still DDF... or possibly one of the "The Real Scientists of Orange County")
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