One of our staff found this giant land snail in our driveway.
After a quick photo session, I turned it loose in our garden.
It wasn't too happy when we moved it, and retreated into its shell,leaving its wrinkly foot and eyestalks outside the front door.
Soon curiosity took over and it began to explore.
Snails can actually move pretty quickly when they want to.
My favorite shot - looking over the edge of the leaf.
In this last image the snail was starting to ooze onto my hand and was sampling my palm before deciding if it was safe or not. I could feel the rasping. Hm...I thought the mouthparts were part of the foot. I will have to do some research on snails now.
nice shots,.. haven't looked at a snail that close before
ReplyDeleteCedar - isn't it amazing what we can see when we look up close! Digital photography and zooming in on shots in computer programs have done a lot to open up the world of the small! I had a professor in college who said the most imporant word is "perspective" and I must agree (and it applies to all uses of the word).
ReplyDeleteSnails are such beautiful creatures, aren't they? They've eaten almost all the sunflowers I planted, a lot of my spinach, they've munched my beans and devoured my salvias and marigolds. They are so destructive, and yet when I find a little tiny one, so small that it's transparent, I cannot bear to kill it.
ReplyDeleteThese are great snail portraits, chock full of character.
I'm glad you enjoyed the portraits, Bird! And I must agree with you - snail and their slug relatives can be so destructive...but if we can look beyond that, they are fascinating!
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