The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating (2 page)

2. DISCOVERY

the snail gets up
and goes to bed
with very little fuss

— K
OBAYASHI
I
SSA
(1763 – 1828)

A
ROUND DINNERTIME
I was surprised to see that the snail was partway out of its shell. It was alive. The visible part of its body was nearly two inches long from head to tail, and moist. The rest of it was hidden in the attached inch-high brown shell, which it balanced gracefully on its back. I watched as it moved slowly down the side of the flowerpot. As it glided along, it gently waved the tentacles on its head.

Throughout the evening the snail explored the sides of the pot and the dish beneath. Its leisurely pace was mesmerizing. I wondered if it would wander off during the night. Perhaps I’d never see it again, and the snail problem would simply vanish.

But when I woke the next morning, the snail was back up in the pot, tucked into its shell, asleep beneath a violet leaf. The night before, I had propped an envelope containing a letter against the base of the lamp. Now I noticed a mysterious square hole just below the return address. This was baffling. How could a hole—a
square
hole—appear in an envelope overnight? Then I thought of the snail and its evening activity. The snail was clearly nocturnal. It must have some kind of teeth, and it wasn’t shy about using them.

M
Y HEALTHY LIFE HAD
been full of activity, filled with friends, family, and work; the pleasures of gardening, hiking, and sailing; and the familiar humdrum of daily routines: making breakfast, exploring the woods, going to work, reading a book, getting up to get something. Now, getting up to get something, anything—that alone would be an accomplishment. From where I lay, all of life was out of reach.

As the months drifted by, it was hard to remember why the endless details of a healthy life and a good job had seemed so critical. It was odd to see my friends overwhelmed by their busy lives, when they could do all the things I could not, without a second thought.

Whereas the future had once beckoned with many intriguing paths, now there was just one impossible route. So it was into the past, with its rich sedimentary layers, that my mind would go instead. A breath of wind through an open window stirred the memory of crossing Penobscot Bay on the bowsprit of a schooner. With the simple wish to brush my teeth came thoughts of my farmhouse bathroom, with its window view of the old apple trees and the poppy garden. It had amused me to see the laundry hanging on its line over the poppies; their yellows, oranges, and reds accented the blue sheets and the nightgowns, which reached with their arms down toward the flowers.

O
N THE SECOND MORNING
of the snail’s stay, I found another square hole, this time in a list I was keeping on a scrap of paper. As each successive morning arrived, so did more holes. Their square shape continued to perplex me. Friends were surprised and amused to receive postcards with an arrow pointing at a hole and my scrawled note: “Eaten by my snail.”

It dawned on me that perhaps the snail needed some real food. Letters and envelopes were probably not its typical diet. A few long-gone flowers were in a vase by my bed. One evening I put some of the withered blossoms in the dish beneath the pot of violets. The snail was awake. It made its way down the side of the pot and investigated the offering with great interest and then began to eat one of the blossoms. A petal started to disappear at a barely discernible rate. I listened carefully. I could
hear
it eating. The sound was of someone very small munching celery continuously. I watched, transfixed, as over the course of an hour the snail meticulously ate an entire purple petal for dinner.

The tiny, intimate sound of the snail’s eating gave me a distinct feeling of companionship and shared space. It also pleased me that I could recycle the withered flowers by my bed to sustain a small creature in need. I might prefer my salad fresh, but the snail preferred its salad half-dead, for not once had it nibbled on the live violet plants that provided its sleeping shelter. One has to respect the preferences of another creature, no matter its size, and I did so gladly.

T
HE STUDIO APARTMENT WHERE
I was staying had lots of windows and a beautiful view of a salt marsh. But the windows were far from where I lay, and I could not sit up to see out. Though they brought me light each day, the world they framed was beyond my reach. Unlike my own farmhouse, which was full of color, the walls and ceiling of this room where I woke each morning were entirely white—I felt trapped inside a stark white box.

During the earlier years of my illness, I had spent countless hours on a daybed in my 1830s farmhouse, staring up at the hand-hewn beams overhead. Their rich, golden brown hues soothed my soul; the knots told a history of branches and long-ago wilderness; the square-headed nails sticking out here and there once had purpose. Each room in the house was trimmed in an old-fashioned milk-paint color. In the room where I lay, the trim was a deep blue, and I could turn my head to see red in the kitchen, green in the bathroom, and a calm gray in the front room.

The daybed at home was right next to a window so that I could look out without sitting up. In the summer my perennial gardens were in view, untended but still thriving. I would watch for the arrival of friends as they came by foot, bike, or car, bringing stories to tell, and I’d wave them off as they set out again. When I woke each morning at dawn, several cats would be prowling the field. I’d hear my neighbors drive off to work, one by one. The morning slant of sun would climb toward noon and then shift its slant for afternoon. One by one my neighbors returned. Evening settled over the field, the cats took up their hunting in the long grass, and finally night descended.

Though I was grateful for the care I was receiving here in this white room, I was not at home. It was hard enough that my body was a bizarre and bewildering place, but I was homesick as well. I was far from the things that delighted me, the wild woods that sustained me, and the social network that enriched me.

Survival often depends on a specific focus: a relationship, a belief, or a hope balanced on the edge of possibility. Or something more ephemeral: the way the sun passes through the hard, seemingly impenetrable glass of a window and warms the blanket, or how the wind, invisible but for its wake, is so loud one can hear it through the insulated walls of a house.

F
OR SEVERAL WEEKS THE
snail lived in the flowerpot just inches from my bed, sleeping beneath the violet leaves by day and exploring by night. Each morning while I was having breakfast it climbed back into the pot to sleep in the little hollow it had made in the dirt. Though the snail usually slept through the days, it was comforting to glance toward the violets and see its small circular shape tucked under a leaf.

Each evening the snail awoke and, with an astonishing amount of poise, moved gracefully to the rim of the pot and peered over, surveying, once again, the strange country that lay ahead. Pondering its circumstance with a regal air, as if from the turret of a castle, it waved its tentacles first this way and then that, as though responding to a distant melody.

As I prepared for the night, the snail moved in its leisurely way down the side of the pot to the dish beneath. It found the flower blossoms I had placed there and began its breakfast.

3. EXPLORATIONS

As the exploration is pressed,
it will engage more of the things close
to the human heart and spirit.

— E
DWARD
O. W
ILSON
,
Biophilia,
1984

W
HEN I WOKE DURING
the night, I would listen intently. Sometimes the silence was complete, but at other times I could hear the comforting sound of the snail’s minuscule munching. With my flashlight I’d search until the beam of light found its small shape. If it was eating, I’d peek to see which of the wizened flowers it preferred. It usually stayed within a few feet of the flowerpot, which sat on a crate that I was using as a bedside table.

Every few days I watered the violets from my drinking glass, and the excess water seeped into the dish beneath. This always woke the snail. It would glide to the rim of the pot and look over, slowly waving its tentacles in apparent delight, before making its way down to the dish for a drink. Sometimes it started back up, only to stop at a halfway point and go to sleep. Waking periodically, and without moving from its position, it would stretch its neck all the way down to the water and take a long drink.

A little more dirt was needed around the roots of the violets, which my caregiver procured from the vegetable garden and added to the flowerpot. The snail was
not
pleased. For the next few days it carefully crept up the side of the pot and directly onto a violet leaf, never touching the garden soil, settling in for the day’s snooze perched high in the crown of the plant. Rather abashed, I asked for more help, and the sandy garden soil was exchanged for humus from the snail’s own woods. Soon the snail was sleeping beneath the violet leaves again in a soft new hollow.

I
N THE 1920S, THE
crate beneath the pot of violets had traveled to Burma and back with the belongings of my maternal grandparents. They were medical missionaries, and my grandfather’s skill as a doctor was well respected. He treated many people with illnesses and injuries and even saved the life of a man severely mauled by a tiger. When the sawbwa of Kengtung’s favorite elephant was ailing, my grandfather was called. Bravely, he lanced the elephant’s giant boil and treated the virulent infection.

My grandparents returned to New England, and my grandfather settled into life as a country doctor. The living room served as his office, and it was there that he saw patients. When I visited as a child, I was petrified he might hear me cough. A ticklish throat or the slightest pallor, and he’d rush to a large jar of revoltingly long tongue depressors, thrusting one down my gagging throat. Yet when he answered a patient’s call, even in the middle of the night, his very first words were always “I am so sorry you are not feeling well.” How rare it is to hear a doctor express such empathy.

A
S THE WEEKS PASSED
, the snail’s nighttime forays became more adventurous, and so did its appetite. The flowers I fed it clearly were not enough. One night it ate part of the label on a vitamin C bottle. Another night it climbed up a pastel drawing made by an artist friend and ate some of the green border. I woke one morning to find a hole in a padded envelope for mailing books.

More and more frequently, in the middle of the night, the snail set off on a longer journey into new territory. I’d discover it partway down the side of the crate, sometimes nearly to the floor. Often, it investigated the india ink words stamped into the wood. It seemed to have a particular interest in anything the color of rich, dark soil, like the crate’s black lettering or the base of the lamp. It was equally attracted to white things such as paper. Perhaps, I thought, paper was its woody version of fast food.

After being transported from the woods, the snail had emerged from its shell into the alien territory of my room, with no clue as to where it was or how it had arrived; the lack of vegetation and the desertlike surroundings must have seemed strange. The snail and I were both living in altered landscapes not of our choosing; I figured we shared a sense of loss and displacement.

E
ACH MORNING THERE WAS
a moment, before I had fully awakened, when my mind still groped its clumsy way back to consciousness, my body not yet remembered, reality not yet acknowledged. That moment was always full of pure, sweet, uncontrollable hope. I did not ask for this hope to come; I did not even want it, for it trailed disappointment in its wake. Yet there it was, hovering within me—hope that my illness had vanished with the night and my health had returned magically with daybreak. But that moment always passed, my eyes opened, and reality flooded in; nothing had changed at all.

Then I thought of the snail. I’d look for the tiny, earth-colored creature. Usually it was back up in the flowerpot asleep, its familiar shape reminding me that I wasn’t alone.

By day, the strangeness of my situation was sharpest: I was bed-bound at a time when my friends and peers were moving forward in their careers and raising families. Yet the snail’s daytime sleeping habits gave me a fresh perspective; I was not the only one resting away the days. The snail naturally slept by day, even on the sunniest of afternoons. Its companionship was a comfort to me and buffered my feelings of uselessness.

In the evenings there was a short but satisfying time when I knew the rest of the human world would join me, if just for the night, in my recumbent lifestyle. When healthy people take to their beds, they sink deeply into a privileged sleep. But with my illness, sleep was diaphanous and often nonexistent. The snail, once again, came to my rescue. As the world fell into sleep without me, the snail awoke, as if this darkest of times were indeed the
best
of times in which to live.

After weeks of around-the-clock companionship, there was no doubt about the relationship: the snail and I were officially cohabiting. I was, I admit, attached. I felt some guilt that it had been taken, unasked, from its natural habitat, yet I was not ready to part with it. It was adding a welcome focus to my life, and I couldn’t think how I would otherwise have passed the hours.

Part 2
A GREEN KINGDOM

Think not of the amount to be accomplished,
the difficulties to be overcome, or the end to be attained,
but set earnestly at the little task at your elbow, letting
that be sufficient for the day.

— S
IR WILLIAM OSLER
, physician (1849 – 1919)