My Pet The Giant Snail
October 31, 2014 8:45 AM   Subscribe

 
For those of you disappointed when escargot is only available as an appetizer.
posted by sobarel at 8:52 AM on October 31, 2014 [2 favorites]


gruuuuu
posted by The Whelk at 8:53 AM on October 31, 2014 [3 favorites]


This is from Chs Bruno, which breeds rats and snails (warning: Google+).
posted by a lungful of dragon at 8:55 AM on October 31, 2014


I like how the camera angle changes and you can see the sheen of snot on the kids forearm.
posted by stinkfoot at 8:57 AM on October 31, 2014 [2 favorites]


NOPE
posted by tonycpsu at 8:58 AM on October 31, 2014 [4 favorites]


Remember when the giant snail broke out and left slime trail across the ceiling and moved into a teapot? Fun times.
posted by colossal at 9:00 AM on October 31, 2014 [2 favorites]


That was neat to see! I've had garden snails as pets from time to time - they're really and truly fascinating. Listening to the 'rasp rasp rasp' sound as they eat a carrot is just too cool. I would LOVE to hang out with a giant snail for a bit.
posted by VioletU at 9:10 AM on October 31, 2014 [2 favorites]


As they say:
There is an ass for every seat.
posted by Flood at 9:13 AM on October 31, 2014 [3 favorites]


I suspect they're less cute if you live in Florida and they're eating your house and giving you parasitic lungworm.

(Also, have changed my twitter bio to "never runs away, addorable and sticky")
posted by sobarel at 9:26 AM on October 31, 2014 [6 favorites]


I suspect they're less cute if you live in Florida and they're eating your house and giving you parasitic lungworm.

Florida is so full of invasive bizarre species at this point that I really think it would pay to detach it from the rest of the country by way of some sort of moat.
posted by poffin boffin at 9:43 AM on October 31, 2014 [7 favorites]


I don't think Flordia is real.
posted by The Whelk at 9:45 AM on October 31, 2014 [2 favorites]


Everyone loves someone.
posted by Fizz at 9:46 AM on October 31, 2014 [5 favorites]


Florida is basically The Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly in landmass form.
posted by sobarel at 9:47 AM on October 31, 2014 [6 favorites]


Hip hip hooray for exotic pets from a gazillion miles away that are dangerous and terrifying! Who could object? What could possibly go wrong? (poffin boffin and The Whelk and sobarel, global warming is coming for you in Wisconsin or Albequerque or Helsinki or whatever little frozen fairyland you live in, and it is going to make you eat your terrible words along with a whole mess of giant African snails. Be sure to boil the dook out of them so you don't end up screaming in agony before lapsing into paralysis and dying.)
posted by Don Pepino at 9:49 AM on October 31, 2014 [1 favorite]


Living in Helsinki eating thoroughly-boiled snails. It's always been the dream.
posted by sobarel at 9:58 AM on October 31, 2014 [4 favorites]


I saw these snails a few years back while on a trip to St. Maarten (where they've decimated the native snail populations). A dozen of these guys would emerge early every morning in the courtyard of our hotel. They move surprisingly quickly. My wife would refuse to go down for breakfast until they left. Me, I was scared of the sexagenarian nudists going for their morning stroll on the beach. At least the snails had shells.
posted by Kabanos at 10:45 AM on October 31, 2014 [7 favorites]




Came here to add to the 'leave those guys in Africa' chorus. Did you know they eat concrete?
Yes they're cute and everything but I'd far rather have a few giraffe as statement pets.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 10:51 AM on October 31, 2014 [1 favorite]


In the 70's when I was being Teenage Stoner Dude there was an elderly neighbor lady who lived on a corner lot and loved to garden. She was friendly and we would talk any time I was passing by. She had a pet turtle that she would bring outside when she was tending the flower beds. The turtle wanted South.

She would bring the turtle and her gardening tools outside and put her friend in the north end of the yard and no matter which way the turtle was originally oriented it would pivot, like a slow compass needle, and head south. The process was that after about twenty minutes the turtle would reach the end of the yard, about to cross the sidewalk, and my neighbor would put down whatever tool she had to hand, rise from her knees and retrieve and redeposit the turtle at the north end of the yard.

I think it was their way of joking with each other.
posted by vapidave at 10:53 AM on October 31, 2014 [12 favorites]


You know, something about the course of this discussion seems hauntingly familiar. Almost as if something thematically related happened just recently in the news cycle. It may even still be going on. I have this vague sense that early on everybody watched with horror and said to themselves, "Wow, whew, dang, glad we don't live there, can you imagine?" But the magic or science whichever it is of the aeroplane means that organisms do not always stay in their habitats of origin. So that not being on the continent or the island or the poor, clownish, afflicted peninsula is no longer a guarantee that you will be safe...

Add in the fanged slathering sociopathic genocidal hellwraiths that run the exotic pet trade, and you've got a real Halloween story!

California fights back with powerpoint. Key concept: "There could be nematodes in the slime trail."

Hawaii fights back with powerpoint.

Australia fights back with lots of pictures of big-eyed children and furry puppies plus House-style animations ripped off from that abysmal show, Monsters Inside Me.
posted by Don Pepino at 10:53 AM on October 31, 2014 [1 favorite]


Huh.
posted by harrietthespy at 10:55 AM on October 31, 2014


Well jeez I guess I'm some sort of mutant because I thought that was adorable.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 11:19 AM on October 31, 2014 [3 favorites]


(singing to self: "I want to thank you for puttin' me back in my snail shell....")
posted by JHarris at 12:28 PM on October 31, 2014 [1 favorite]


Well jeez I guess I'm some sort of mutant because I thought that was adorable.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 2:19 PM on October 31 [3 favorites +] [!]


Spider Snail-Man (2002) directed by Sam Raimi
posted by Fizz at 12:29 PM on October 31, 2014 [1 favorite]


I thought it was cute, too. I don't often think about snails, and I certainly never considered that they liked to be patted.
posted by clone boulevard at 12:43 PM on October 31, 2014


I've been watching the Hawaii rat lungworm conference video in short intervals since I found it. It's kind of hard to take, but it is good if you're trying to diet because it's nauseating. Not only are the slides grody, somebody seated unfortunately near a microphone keeps coughing and coughing and coughing--obviously a psychosomatic reaction to all the nasty slides about eating slugs and rat feces and coughing up larval worms and getting them all up in your brain and whatall. To these stomach-turning effects, I regret to inform you, you can add the constant and eventually maddening din of coqui frogs because the conference was held on the Big Island, and that sound is inescapable anywhere you go there because the whole place is overrun with them and they are, like every other invasive species in Hawaii, destroying the place. Just on a whim, I googled "coqui frog exotic pet" and found a thread full of weird-animal junkies all raving about the cute and asking each other where they can get some of the adorable little scamps so they can build "frog rooms" in their houses. So, coming soon to the southeastern USA, I guess. Thanks, everybody with a hard-on for cute edgy animals from BFE! Thanks in advance!

Anyway, so if listening to piercing bells while watching an immense snail that looks like a vulva wearing a turban flow over a child gets you salivating, you don't have to just sit there wishing. Get on kingsnake.com and order you up a whole mess of cool looking spiders and snails and little frogs and incredibly rare endangered tortoises and baby boas and ocelots and albino cinnamon bears and naked mole rat/ferret crosses and dwarf hippopotami. Just go for it. Get a caribou calf. Get a California condor. You're at the top of the foodchain; you're in the first world; it's time to live like it, Ted Nugent.
posted by Don Pepino at 12:44 PM on October 31, 2014 [6 favorites]


I thought it was fake because the eyes never once retracted. I'm surprised to find out there are super large land snails out there.
posted by bonobothegreat at 3:59 PM on October 31, 2014


Chs Bruno, which breeds rats and snails

WITH EACH OTHER!?
posted by moonmilk at 4:13 PM on October 31, 2014 [1 favorite]


Chs Bruno, which breeds rats and snails

> WITH EACH OTHER!?


At least then we'd be able to catch the fuckers.
posted by a halcyon day at 4:29 PM on October 31, 2014 [3 favorites]


This is from Chs Bruno, which breeds rats and snails

You know, give them half a chance and they'll do it themselves.
posted by Chitownfats at 4:30 PM on October 31, 2014 [1 favorite]


Snails vapidave, we're talking snails.
posted by mattoxic at 6:49 PM on October 31, 2014


Anyway, so if listening to piercing bells while watching an immense snail that looks like a vulva wearing a turban flow over a child gets you salivating, you don't have to just sit there wishing. Get on kingsnake.com and order you up a whole mess of cool looking spiders and snails and little frogs and incredibly rare endangered tortoises and baby boas and ocelots and albino cinnamon bears and naked mole rat/ferret crosses and dwarf hippopotami. Just go for it. Get a caribou calf. Get a California condor. You're at the top of the foodchain; you're in the first world; it's time to live like it, Ted Nugent.


gahhhhhh i just thought it was sweet how gentle he was no worries I'll show myself out i have to make hollandaisse sauce out of all of these condor yolks
posted by A Terrible Llama at 8:06 PM on October 31, 2014 [3 favorites]


Just think of all the snail cooties that family is being exposed to.
posted by InsertNiftyNameHere at 9:46 PM on October 31, 2014


More snail amusement. First a Song ,then a short Film about a concerned naturalist.
posted by boilermonster at 12:02 AM on November 1, 2014 [1 favorite]


« Older Music is the cup that holds the wine of silence   |   Express yourself sexually in an ill-fitting wig. Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments