The eye of a snail, investigating that other eye-on-a-stalk on the camera.
This is a more conventional view.My little garden is shady and damp; slugs, snails and sowbugs love it. The sowbugs I ignore, the snails I remove from leaves and toss into the ivy bordering the path, hoping they won't find their way back. And the slugs, I kill on sight; I have lost far too many good plants to slugs to have any tolerance left.
Why the snails merit any kinder treatment, I don't really know. They are basically just slugs with a shell on the back, and they eat the same plants. Maybe not as voraciously, and maybe they haven't proved themselves quite as prolific. Or it may be that the shells are attractive.
I'm silly that way.
I caught this brown one on a ficus I have moved outside for the summer. New munchies!
These are not as common around here as the banded snail (above). And notice the difference in patterns and colour on the body. Browns instead of blue-black.
The yellow banded snail seems to be possibly one of the Cepaea, which are extremely variable in colour and pattern. (See bootstrap analysis, or Google cepaea images.I'm not so sure of the brown one. It could be a Cepaea nemoralis, or then again, maybe an Allogonda townsendiana; they both live around here. See local photos of both, taken just a few miles east of us.
And one is endangered, the other a pest. Was I wise to move it to the ivy? Or should I have squished it? Or let it have the ficus?
Why don't these things come with labels on the bottom?
I'd err on the side of mercy in this case. Better to let a single pest go than to take out one more of an endangered species.
ReplyDeleteAnd the shells are lovely. I've never seen any but the plain brown snails in the wild. You're very lucky to have those beautiful blue ones.
"I'd err on the side of mercy in this case."
ReplyDeleteYou've convinced me.
(Didn't take much, did it? Next thing you know, I'll be letting the slugs off easy, too.)