Don’t know about the others Kieth but I’m still alive
Just checked my pulse and I'm still hanging on too.
I have a snail lover's dilemma though. I posted about the invasive Italian White snail that I saw on my holidays a couple of weeks ago, and today I found one crawling along the side of the car. How it managed to hold on all the way home from devon I don't know but I've put it into snail jail to prevent a new breakout in Wales. They live on sand and don't survive frosts apparently so the chances of them colonising the Welsh hills are fairly remote. Either way I have to keep it as a pet, euthanise it, or take it on a very long drive back to Devon.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
What will happen to everything if it’s set free? Will it kill all the local snails, eat all the plants?. If it’s the only one it won’t have a mate to breed with. Where in Devon did you find it?
Gardening on the wild, windy west side of Dartmoor.
Well it could already be carrying eggs but they'd all be dead come winter either way. It was found near Thurlestone. There's a nature reserve and beach car park there that's infested with them.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
I expect they would soon learn to adapt to our climate though, strange as you’d think of Italy as hot and dry, just the opposite of what snails usually like. Seems they’ve all survived the drought here, now we’ve had rain there are slugs and snails everywhere.
Gardening on the wild, windy west side of Dartmoor.
I found another Italian White Snail on the car today. That's the third one now and it's been a month since we were down in Devon. This one was inside the door jamb so maybe it was trapped inside the car somewhere. I'm starting to suspect that a small child may have posted it into the chassis somehow. There are some big holes where the rails for the sliding doors attach so I'm going to shine a torch in there to make sure there isn't a whole colony of hitchhikers inside.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
That's a fair size for only 6 months - Super Snail ?
Just comparing 6 months and 1 year, there appears to be 1 "ring" difference. Counting mine - Big White has 4 with just the 5th starting and Big Brown has 5 clear ones.
However, both of them are shell length of 12 cm and roughly another 6 or 7 cm when extended.
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Where in Devon did you find it?
Seems they’ve all survived the drought here, now we’ve had rain there are slugs and snails everywhere.
My last baby is a year old now.
Just comparing 6 months and 1 year, there appears to be 1 "ring" difference. Counting mine - Big White has 4 with just the 5th starting and Big Brown has 5 clear ones.
However, both of them are shell length of 12 cm and roughly another 6 or 7 cm when extended.