My five-year-old wanted a dog. I didn’t. The poop, the barking, the shedding, no thank you. I did, however, say yes to a couple of snails in a jar. Then I discovered something about snails: they do it. Some snails do it with other snails and the hermaphroditic ones do it with themselves. This is why when you start out with two snails in a jar, you can end up with more than you bargained for. I don’t know why it surprised me, but it did.
Here in LA, if you leave two actors on a closed set for three weeks, they will likely have relations as well. Only they will videotape theirs.
There’s only so much snail sex I can take, especially with small children in the house, so after breakfast today we let them go. There was a lot of melodrama and Pearl actually said the words, “I’m going to miss you soooooo much,” which is interesting since she hadn’t said two words to them since capturing them over a month ago.
No one ever bothered to clean the jar. The sides were covered with snail poop and sludge from the decomposing fig leaves and muddy water. Further evidence that a dog is not in our future.
The kids were fine reaching into that nasty jar. I probably would’ve scraped them out with a stick. Or worse, called the LAFD.
Once they were out I was a little worried that we’d put them in harms way—and by “harm’s way” I mean Vivi’s 2-year-old clodhoppers and trash compressor hands— but she was actually quite gentle. Sweet thing.
It was way more fun watching them feast on grass than ignoring them in jar. They squirmed like little lava lamps. They seemed happy, in their snail way. Finally we headed back inside. “Mommy?” Pearl said.
Here we go. The dog pitch.
“I think I’m ready for a… butterfly.”
