Peter Williams - Snail

So attached was the author Patricia Highsmith to snails that they became her constant travelling companions. Secreted in a large handbag or, in the case of travel abroad, carefully positioned under each breast, they provided her with comfort and companionship in what she perceived to be a hostile world.

Theirs was an unusual relationship: one normally reserved for a dog or a cat. For most human beings just the mention of the word snail brings out a negative response; certainly not warmth or affection or a desire to share living space. It seems as though the relationship we have with this animal has been influenced by the harm it has inflicted over the years on our cabbage crops, strawberries and garden seedlings. Britain is a nation of gardeners and doesnt take kindly to animals that threaten that pastime. Try looking at the shelves of any bookshop for a volume on snails that is complimentary to them and you will be disappointed. The language is often heated and full of military metaphors. Understand the enemy as a first step to banishment, says one, while another urges us to stop them in their tracks with a barrier or a trap. The Royal Horticultural Society makes slugs and snails the number one pest. Andrew Holgate, writing for the Sunday Times in a piece appropriately entitled Hostas at Dawn Showdown in the Garden, singles them out as the worst offenders in the garden and amongst the most unpleasant of the creatures to be found there. America is similarly unimpressed by slugs and snails. There they have been described as fun to hate, easy to kill, but maddeningly difficult to control.

Our response to the snail is rarely one of indifference, especially seeing its body fully extended. This example is Helix algira, from Dupuys 1848 Histoire Naturelle des Mollusques.

For my own part, the relationship with the snail started when I was young, staying at my aunts house perched precariously on a Welsh hillside. I remember them emerging, as if by magic, on the stone steps leading down to the river after a shower of rain. To this day I associate the smell of wet concrete and coal dust with