Its a Snail's Life .........

My blog and FB friend from the NorthEast/Guwahati, Kavita Saharia, a dental surgeon by profession, has a wonderful blog where she  writes and posts pictures about her various trips into the countryside, and the traditional celebrations of the region.

Amidst all this, she also notices little things. Like a snail, resting a while beside its future progeny, somewhere by the side of a road.

 Snails have one of the most primitive brains around, and are  hermaphrodites, meaning they have the ability to produce both sperm and eggs.  When the eggs hatch, the baby snails need calcium so desperately that they eat up the shell they have hatched out of. Their own shells grow as their anatomy grows. And so they never really grow out of their shell.   

Page-3 types eat them, and Escargot is the common name for snails when they are to be eaten. Millions of pounds of it are consumed around the world annually. In fact, there is even a day to celebrate it! May 24th is the National Escargot Day.

I thought it fitting to celebrate them earlier than May 24,  today, as simply Snail Day !

(photo by Kavita Saharia)

She,
or is it a He,
or possibly both,
lies spent,
on a spring morning
nippy
in the northeast,
on the bitumen carpet
of a garden path,
just having introduced
to this big bad world,
hundreds of
offspring
at the moment
ensconced
in their lovely white
protective wraps.

He/she slowly ambles away,
straining
a muscular foot,
helped by a bit of mucus
to reduce the friction
with the uneven
unsmooth roads,
thinking,
how lucky they are
that there is
no
black and white,
fair and dark,
friction in a snailly world.

The dark little ones
will appear
out of their white wraps,
in due course,
and grow up,
in their own smart shells,
moving around
and birthing their own
in gardens
and woods
and damp and dingy places
but
in similar white wraps.

And the little
primordial
primitive brain
does a little dance,
licks its radula tongue
chews some moss
and thanks the lord
that they don't live
in a country where
shameless bipeds,
eat the little ones
white wrap and all,
saying,
"Très bien !
Escargots ! C'est délicieux...."