snail girl spring
tips on withstanding fascism from your friendly garden gastropod
Over the last few months, I have had the same post shared with me by six different people. The post is a celebration of “snail girl spring”—a beautiful, romanticized aesthetic, pulling inspiration from the garden’s slowest creature and reminding us to be healthy, get sleep, take care of our skin and go outside.
There is nothing that the girlies (me) love more than romanticizing something. Now you’re telling me I get to romanticize snails? Hell yes.
I am all about snail girl spring. Not because snails are slow, docile, dewy creatures of rest—but because snails are absolute fucking monsters, radical punks and menaces. Snails are the most metal motherfuckers in the garden, and right now, I think we need that. So in honor of earth day, as well as society’s rapid descent into fascism, I present to you…..
How to be a snail
Show em your teeth
The most fucked up thing about snails is their teeth. They have thousands of fucking teeth. Between 14,000 to 27,000 teeth, to be more precise, which are clustered in rows which make up something called the radula. The radula adapts to the diet of the snail—from serrated seaweed cutters to switchblade-esque fangs designed for ripping flesh. Cone snails, which are a type of sea slug, have barbed, hollow teeth which excrete a deadly toxin. Not only are these harpoon-shaped teeth terrifying, but they are also detachable, allowing some cone snails to shoot their teeth like bullets at prey.
While your average garden snail is not able to shoot you, you can hear them chewing. It is as delightful and terrifying as expected. So if you, perhaps, live in the same neighborhood as a Republican lawmaker, it might be extremely funny to hide Bluetooth speakers around and play the sound of a stream snail eating at ominous and unexpected times. It won’t change laws, but it will make me laugh.
Fuck gender
Literally nothing is scarier to Republicans than gender nonconforming people—except for intersex people, apparently. You know who would make them quake in their Johnston & Murphy loafers? Snails.
Most snails (and all land snails) are hermaphrodites, which means that they contain both male and female sex organs. Their mating rituals are often complicated—both partners can fertilize each others eggs, and some snails will even self-fertilize.1
When more children are conservative than liberal, when biological sex is being litigated and trans lives criminalized, it’s important that those of us with the ability to not give a shit about gender do so. It’s easy to think that the obsession with trans folks won’t touch you, because you are not trans/intersex/queer/gender nonconforming. But they’re the canary in the coal mine. They’re an indicator species. History has shown us that if they come for your neighbor, they’ll probably come for you next. So be like a snail. Let go of binary assumptions.
Become a cannibalistic scavenger
Snails are what we call a consumer—an organism that obtains its energy from consuming other organisms. Snails are heralded as beautiful veggie eaters, but in all honesty, they’re scavengers. Your average land snail is a detritivore, meaning that it eats dead organic matter, especially plant detritus. It will eat plant waste, animal waste and even other snails. Why do you think they have so many goddamn teeth?
There is something so important about eating up the dog shit and decay and waste left behind, and turning it into something powerful and useful. There is something powerful about following the slime trails of other snails and eating them. Be a scavenger. Gather what society considers detritus and do something good with it. Then eat anyone who gets in your way.
Slime your predators
Let’s say you do get eaten. It sucks, but sometimes it happens. Do you go gently into that good night? No! You make your predator choke on you.
Snails are characterized by their slime, or mucus, which can change texture and chemical makeup as needed. Different gastropods use their mucus in different ways, but many use it as a defense mechanism. If threatened, they make themselves so gooey that they will literally gum up the mouth of whatever is trying to eat them. They can also excrete toxins, shitty flavors and chemical warnings.
I think that’s a lesson we should all take to heart: if you take me down, I’m taking you with me.
Grow a thicker backbone
Sorry to say it, but your grandpa is right. Sometimes we just need to buck up.
While no one except cockroaches are immune from man-made interference, snails are generally good at thriving even in the most inhospitable conditions. Consider the scaly-foot gastropod, which lives in deep-sea hydrothermal vents in the Indian Ocean—because of its environment, the scaly-foot gastropod’s shell has an external layer of iron sulphides.2 It literally has an iron back. Move over, Margaret Thatcher.
er snails do this too, in slightly less metal ways. Over 30 years, scientists found that as the population of invasive green crabs rose in the Gulf of Maine, local sea snails adapted to the new threat by just growing thicker shells. The standard snail shell is made of calcium carbonate, rather than iron, but by producing more calcium and thickening their shell, the snails have made themselves harder to eat. Fuck you, crabs.
Pick your battles
Speaking of shells, a snail’s shell is its best defense. When needed, a snail can absorb its whole body inside of it to protect its delicate organs.
Additionally, snails use their shells for estivating—a form of hibernation characterized by inactivity that lets snails go dormant for a varied period of time. Unlike standard hibernation, which takes place over winter, snail estivation is more common during the summer, especially during extreme heat or drought. Many snails do hibernate, generally under ground, whereas many species will climb structures like fences or plants to estivate.
To prevent water loss, snails use their slime to literally seal themselves inside. Estivating is different from sleeping. The average snail sleeps in fits for 12-13 hours at a time, and then spends up to 30 hours awake, much like me when I don’t have my Adderall. Estivation can be last anywhere from days to years, if needed. (Though years-long estivation is rare in standard land snail species.)
I’m not saying that we should all estivate for the next three years. But I am saying that when there are five terrible things happening in the news every day, and we’re spending our effort calling, protesting, donating, advising and fighting, it is necessary to slime yourself away for 4 days every now and then when the environment gets inhospitable.
Become an invasive species
Do not tell anyone in my naturalist training program that I said this, but sometimes I’m in awe of invasive species. An invasive species moves into a new area and spreads. Because it has no native predators, it is able to repopulate quickly, without fear of predation. It competes with native organisms for the same resources—but because it’s not dying off, it wins. Soon, it has choked out native competitors and grown unchecked. This has horrible impacts on the environment; without those native species, the native predators start to suffer because they no longer have a food source. Their role in the ecological web then crumbles, causing a ripple effect through the entire ecosystem.
So many snails are invasive species.
New Zealand Mud snails are tiny, drought hardy, and one female and its offspring can produce 40 million snails in a year. They’ve absolutely decimated parts of the Great Lakes, and literally the only thing stopping them are some Labradors in Wisconsin. Giant African Land Snails (which are absurdly cute) are menacing Japan. Rosy land snails have eaten most of the native snail populations on the Hawaiian islands, and apple snails may actually eat the entire state of Louisiana, and poison everyone with their neurotoxins.
I am generally not an advocate for wiping out entire species and making environments inhospitable, but sometimes you really just need to multiply, swarm and make life unbearable for all those present by flipping Congress and your state legislatures. By the way, do you know what elections are coming up in your area?
Most snails breed through the use of “darts” which are like snail penises except that they can rupture internal organs. So in a way, snails are like everyone’s favorite dark romance love interest.
Unfortunately, these snails are becoming endangered due to deep sea mining.