Friday, March 23, 2007

What's in a name?

I've nicknamed the snail of mine who has an egg sack on his shell "Spooge," but we decided he should have a proper name for when the egg sack has long since gone away. I settled on Winston for a first name, but needed to come up with a really great last name for him because I wanted him to have roman numerals on the end. At work we were discussing some naming options and were trying to think of what the British royal family's name is and realized they don't have one. The closest thing they have to a last name is "of Whales." So, after much balking at the british royal family I settled on a name for Spooge:

Winston "of Whales" Mountbatten-Windsor IV

Thursday, March 22, 2007

Now what?

I came home today and saw that my snails have made new snails. At least twelve. How many snails can a tank hold before it becomes one giant snail?

I think, in general, snails kind of gross me out.

Baboons don't kill snails, people do. Me in particular.

Man, what is with me killing snails? I just keep doing it and it's driving me crazy.

Remember how I mentioned that my baboon tank killed all the snails in it, even when I washed it all out and filled it up a'fresh? Well I tried again, this time with new rocks, a well rinsed tank, and one very well rinsed plant. And what did I get? Two dead snails. Within minutes. When my snails die they do a little snail death dance. It's kind of like a spasm where they try to get out of their own shell or something. It's sad.

What oh what am I doing wrong? My tainted plastic tank theory seems to be shot since there can't be hardly any remnant of plastic baboon toxin in there. Last time was with filtered water, this time it was with tap water (which very likely could be the culprit this time around). I'm going to let this tap water sit for a few days and put some drops in it to let it de-chlorine-ify and then try with another couple of snails. If they die instantly I think my snail husbandry licence needs to be revoked. The little shits will just have to live in their swampy breeding jar for the rest of eternity and never see the glory of my lovely new tank.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Clean tank!

My snail tank was literally cloudy with snails and snail larva and I was getting a little grossed out, so today I rolled up my sleeves and went about cleaning my tank.
  1. I removed the plant first and put it in a Tupperware container with some of the tank water.
  2. Then I started picking the snails off the side of the tank and rocks and placing them in the container with the plant.
  3. The baby snails are the hardest to pick up and move, so I'm more than certain that I lost several of them in the move.
  4. After the snails and plants were out I drained the water and put the rocks into a different Tupperware container.
  5. I cleaned out the tank with a sponge (no soap, no scratchy sponge) and then rinsed it several times.
  6. I dried it off, including the inside so that I could wipe off any remaining attached debris or egg sacks.
  7. Then I started running hot water into the container holding the rocks; I kept the water running hard and hot as I moved the rocks around inside the container with my hand. The water spilled over the side of the container carrying with it all kinds of disgusting things. I did this until the water ran clear.
  8. I put a couple bottles of room temperature water into the tank.
  9. I placed the plants back into the tank and then covered their roots with rocks.
  10. I filled in the other areas with rocks and made them even.
  11. Then I picked all of the snails out of the container and put them in their tank.
  12. I filled the tank back up with water.
Now the snails are busy checking out the new terrain in fresh clean water. I think the big, older ones are pretty relieved to be rid of some of the egg sacks and larva; I know I am.

Monday, March 19, 2007

More than a gift of quick thrills, The gift of snails.

After many weeks of laborious efforts, my English pond snails have finally reproduced! My snail decanter was full of baby snails last week, and I decided to put a small tank together for M at the front desk.

When giving the gift of snails I like to remind my friends that not only are they receiving a gift of hours of fun and excitement, but also a small piece of our collective culture as human beings. Here are 3 fun snaily facts (snacts) I like to surprise my friends with.

1) Did you know that in Michelangelo’s Moses, Moses is pictured with a snail’s ‘horns’ and snaily demeanor?
2) Even as late as 1975 approximately 40% of Oceana residents still believed that the earth and its residents were balanced on the back of a giant snail. This cosmic mollusk was believed to consume entire worlds with a lick of its tongue.
3) In the ancient Navajo creation myth, snail girl was celebrated above all other animal spirits. According to the Navajo when the earth was created snail girl brought water from the underworld in her shell for streams, lakes, and glaciers. A pretty shoddy case for water conservation, even for a 10 thousand year old civilization, but a testament to mankind’s fascination with the snail none the less.


For more information on snails and their lofty postion in our religious history visit this great site! http://www.godchecker.com/gotw/012_holy_snail.php


Boy, do I have a snog for you!



Those snails are crazy!

Now, what I am about to show you is something I've never seen before. On Friday I noticed something that I thought I was hallucinating; one of my largest snails is carrying the eggs of another snail. So apparently, one snail was knocked up then climbed on top of the biggest snail in the tank, and laid all his/her eggs on THE SHELL of the snail! I picked the snail out of the tank to get a good look, but the photo I took of him in the tank is much better quality. Enjoy Snoggers!

Baboons Kill Snails

It's sad but true: Baboons kill snails.

I recently moved my happy family of snails from their swampy little jar to a nice new exciting jungle tank. Only to have them spasm around for a while and then die. At first I thought I had shocked them because the water was a tad on the warm side. Yeah, being picked up with chopsticks from your swamp and dropped into a tepid jungle tank can be traumatic, I know. But I added some cold water and figured they'd recover. Then I dropped in some new teenager snails just to prove it. Well, they all died.

Fast forward by about a week. I finally got around to cleaning out the dirty tank. I washed the tank, rinsed off the rocks for like 5 minutes, filled it with fresh water and put the plants back in there, SANS BABOON. And what happened? I killed 5 more snails within an hour. Shit!

It looks like I'll be waiting for some eggs to hatch in my swamp jar. Baboons suck.

Saturday, March 17, 2007

Molecule

Hi Carollani it's me Jacob. Molecule is doing well. How are your snails? Have they gotten bigger?

Bigshot



Bigshot the biggest snail

An introduction


Here's Valerie Plame making her way across a fake plant leaf. If you look closely, you'll see I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby eyeing her from the red rock. I can't remember if the rock was red when I bought it. The plant is kind enough to point Scooter out in this shot. Joseph Wilson is off in the corner writing a book or something.

I need to get some real plants for my snails. The fake stuff just isn't cutting it anymore, functionally or aesthetically. As you can see, fake plant extraction will be super simple since I just gently set them atop the blue rocks.

Snails poop a lot.

Snail me, I'm Irish.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

A while back CJ and I talked about making snail merchandise, and one of the items we came up with was a shirt that said, "Snail me, I'm Irish!" We discussed whether the "Snail" should be the word snail or an image of a snail and I think we decided on the image. I think we should have these made for this special holiday!

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Lights out!

The light in my snail tank died a week or so ago and I just haven't gotten around to replacing it yet, so my snails have been "chillin" in a dark and colder tank. They've adapted quite well to their dimmer lifestyle, but I don't get to enjoy them as much as I usually do because I can't always see them.

Hopefully I'll get a new light for the tank soon, so I can go back to watching my snails instead of working.