Snail carnage

When my wife and I stepped out of the theatre in London on Tuesday night it was a bit of a shock to see that the world had been drenched while we were enjoying ourselves. Thunder and lightning were still flashing and rumbling in the distance and this was the same all the way back to Berkhamsted, which when we got there looked as though it had experienced a minor flash flood. Walking back along Bridgewater Road I felt and heard to my dismay the hideous sound of a snail’s shell cracking under my boot.

As much as I love living in the country, sometimes the spiders, snails, slugs and bugs can get a bit too much and this was one of those evenings. What the hell is it about rain that makes snails come out and party in such numbers? I couldn’t believe how many there were on the way home - as soon as Katie and I realised that a major snail excursion was in progress we moved to single file mode and tried avoiding them by taking sure-footed steps. Unfortunately it wasn’t enough - the final shell-count was approximately five dead with a number of others sent flying and rattling into the undergrowth, primarily due to big-ass tree shadows where nothing except night-vision goggles could have saved them. I hate killing things in such a horrible way like this, but what can you do?

The day I once stepped on a frog on the way home still haunts me.