Goodbye Snail

Tuesday 22 July 2008

5.45am I woke about 4.00am thinking I heard a mozzie. I couldn’t settle. It feels like another hot day. The sun’s out already.

My next-door-plot-neighbour was at the allotment yesterday – Elizabeth. She lent me her hose so the plants got a really good water. I think I might get one at some point.

I’ve been thinking about a snail I accidently crushed yesterday. I felt awful and I didn’t know what to do. His shell was completely broken off. He was moving. I kept saying I was sorry.

I thought he’d die a slow painful death without his shell. I got a bucket of water and tried to drown him. He moved a bit in there and contracted (perhaps trying to breathe?) and then stopped moving.

I took him out and put him in a shady spot under a leaf. I still wasn’t sure he was dead. I told Elizabeth about it and said I didn’t know what to do.

“Nature eats nature”, she said. And she told me that if she did the same she threw it in the river “then at least the fishes will get a good meal”.

I hoped it would be better than a slow death in the heat of the sun so I went and found the snail (who I hoped was already dead anyway) and I threw him into the river saying “Goodbye my Love” (as a kind of blessing I suppose).

But I still felt bad about it and cried when I told K. about it last night. And it’s still with me now. Like the pigeon I saw hit by a car and couldn’t catch. I wondered for days how that had suffered with its broken wing and hoped it had been quickly eaten by a fox.

But I try to rationalise. After all, every time I step onto my allotment I must kill something. I probably don’t realise how many snails, slugs, ants, beetles or bees I may have crushed underfoot. Not to mention worms. Or what about all the tiny insects whose homes I’m destroying every time I do some weeding.

If I think about it too much I’ll never go to the allotment again. But I love it there. And I hope the animals I inadvertently kill don’t suffer. That’s my biggest hope. Because death is okay. Death is fine. It’s the suffering I can’t bear to think about.

Thinking of that snail moving amongst his crushed shell, possibly in pain, agony. I hope he didn’t suffer. I hope his soul or consciousness or whatever was no longer in his body. I hope he is now complete with shell, in a beautiful garden, or swimming in a clear stream as a fish.