The snail was too fast for us

One of the pluses of living in a city as humid as Houston is the opportunity to explore the endless varieties of gardens. Just walking into my local gym and I have to pass several flower beds. I can’t say if I would have noticed one flower growing in Houston, if I hadn’t been blessed with my daughter. Botanicals have been a part of my life, but really more as a survival tool. Flowers have been my salvation to avoid certain death situations during such volatile times like Valentine’s, birthdays, and when I screw up and can’t think of a good apology. Which means that I technically should own a substantial portion of FTD by now.

It started out harmless enough with my little girl picking flowers on the way into the gym. WARNING: Picking flowers on the way into the gym means that you are responsible to keep the flowers alive until you leave the gym. Go ahead and test your manhood in the gym by carrying a tulip or a pansy around. Then one day my daughter expanded her ambitions from one flower to picking an entire bouquet and insisted on giving them to friend of mine in the gym. In the quest for a bouquet of flowers my daughter discovered something better than flowers. Snails?.. Now I’m carrying flowers around the gym and watching pet snails, at this point I was not sure why I was at the gym and I think most of the other people there were wondering the same thing. I was successful in convincing my daughter to give many of the captured snails their freedom upon leaving, but not all the time.

Soon we had officially taken a snail home as a member of the family. “Snaily” as he, no wait maybe it was a girl, how in the hell do you tell? I digress, Snaily and my daughter became attached at the hip and I was and still continue to be stunned as to how durable snails actually are. After prying my daughter away from her new found love so she could go to bed that night. I put Snaily to bed in his/her/? new home of plush Tupperware elegance. Much too my amazement and my daughter’s horror, Snaily was not in his/her/? home in the morning. It turns out that Snaily was too fast for us! Who knew? When adopting random pets into your family be aware that pets typically come in one of two categories, the one’s that won’t go away and the one’s that always get away. As an authority on snails after having one pet snail in my lifetime, for an estimated 14 hours total. I can say with utter certainty that snails are in the latter category. Wow, that actually makes them a great pet. At least until I find the dried up corpse of Snaily in the house somewhere.

The snail was too fast for us