Aug28

Covid pets

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My children have become resourceful in their time of need. And boredom.

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Snails in their new… terrarium, I guess?

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Closer shot. They look happy. I mean, I think.

After gathering these creatures from the neighborhood, the girls are learning snail husbandry. Each snail is named and checked on daily. A chart has been made with dates, colorations, observations. “What snails eat” has been googled many times to be sure they are well cared for.

Then, several weeks in, lo and behold…

snail eggs

Snail eggs!

After more google research, these were moved to their own container to prevent squishing, even from their mother, apparently. In a few weeks, they should hatch. It will be fun to see how tiny these baby snails are.

This has been going on since June (taking up space on my counter). I wonder how long it will last before I can feed them to our other pets, the chickens. After I google whether or not chickens eat snails, that is.

What’s the weirdest pet you or your children have ever had?

64 responses »

  1. What a wonderful thing you are allowing your kids to do.

    Growing up my parents humored me through all my pets. I raised frogs, toads, walkingsticks, and praying-mantises, along with taking in every stray cat, and injured bird and bunny I could catch. It was a real zoo. For a while, we even had a gopher. And while I’m not sure how they felt about the bugs, and smells (as they never did anything to discourage me in that area) I know that it was some of the best memories of my childhood!

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    • Oh, dear. I hadn’t thought much about how to dispose of them, beyond the possibility of feeding them to the chickens (still need to google that), but I’m not so sure the girls would appreciate me doing that. The counter will look so much bigger once this tub is off it! Perhaps, instead, I should google escargot recipes. šŸ˜‰

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  5. A home with dirt and leaves, Betsy. My grandchildren showed me their home for the grasshoppers and it was leaves and grass. They let the grasshoppers out into the garden at night. Your children are taking good care of the their creatures. I can see the little smiles. Chameleons were popular as pets when I was young. We would buy them from the PNE in Vancouver. I donā€™t recall them lasting too long.

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  8. [Apparently my first comment that I made yesterday didn’t make it through the system so I’m trying again…]

    I like your snails if only because they are so photogenic. What a fun new kind of pet.

    [Fingers crossed this makes it to you.]

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    • I got it, Ally Bean! I got it! Thank you for your comment. And, yeah, I guess you’re right. They are rather photogenic, aren’t they? They’d be so pleased to hear it, too. šŸ™‚
      (Glad your comment made it through this time. Thanks for retrying!)

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  10. You’re going to feed your children’s pets to your chickens! Do they know this?? I think you may be onto a new business venture here.
    My daughter used to adopt worms while we worked in the garden. But they had to be outside pets (if they survived more than an hour of handling, which was rare). šŸ˜€

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  12. Oh, wow! Kudos to you for letting the girls keep the snails on the counter. I think chickens would eat snails. They eat slugs. I think. I know they eat cabbage worms and love them. When the kids were little, we used to find monarch butterfly caterpillars and raise them until they turned into butterflies. Even did the same thing with a tomato hornworm, which turns into a tiger moth. Who knew? My son has fish besides his kitties, and his girlfriend has a leopard gecko, which is surprisingly cute.

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  13. Ha! I love this, such a fun and educational activity your kids came up with. But feeding your pets to your pets, I don’t know about that, especially since all the snails have names and observational data attached to them.
    Montgomery-Montgomery the walking stick was the strangest pet we have had so far. Unless you think potato bugs (roly poly or pill bugs) are stranger. We kept them in a jar I lovingly called “The Death Jar” (The Death Star, Star Wars reference). It was not that we wanted to kill them, but, you know…

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    • Potato bugs are certainly strange pets. Potentially the winner there. And I don’t really intend to feed the snails to the chickens (though I think the chickens would like that), any more than I could eat our chickens when they stop laying. The snails will probably be released back into “the wild” when the girls grow tired of them.

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  17. Wow! You and your children are incredibly resourceful! You will all be a fount of knowledge on everything snails and how cute about the eggs! I look forward to the pics of baby snails! Also, I will look differently upon them in the garden no longer as merely plant eating pests! šŸ˜€

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  21. I think it’s wonderful how resourceful your children are, Betsy! I remember having been fond of snails too when I was a child. These days with gardening I’m not much of a fan anymore though. šŸ˜ My funniest pet was a frog. šŸ˜Š

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