A snail story
Growing up in a small town was fun. I used to live with my mom and grandparents in a very tiny two-room house. My grandparents’ bed was in the kitchen and this space, in particular, had a very cozy warm feeling to it.
The house was small, but our backyard was big and inhabited with chickens, goats, rabbits, and even 20 little piglets with their mom at some point. My grandad used to name them after members of the family. Then he would pick up a marker and let me draw the first letter of the name on the piglet’s back. This way we knew which is which. Besides the farm animals, we also had a cat or two hanging out in the yard and one dog which we saved from the streets. It was a full house. The garden was a pretty lively place too. We had tons of vegetables, fruit trees and there was even some space left for flowers. It was like a magical house that nurtured many life forms and a very peculiar place to explore as a kid.
With that many animals and plants, my grandparents managed to make more than half of their food by themselves. They had other tricks of getting the most out of the surrounding nature. For example, in the summer, they would bring me with them to the nearby fields to collect herbs for the winter. And in the spring, when nature was awakening in its lively dance of colors, my grandparents had a different tradition. They went out to the grass fields right after the refreshing spring rain had fallen on the warm ground. And there they collected the snails that were freely roaming around the fields. After that, my grandparents would return home with at least one bucket full of those poor creatures.
The first time they brought them, I was around four years old and I was so excited. I’ve never seen so many snails in one place. I immediately started planning the building of my own snail empire and there was so much to do to make sure my new pets will live in comfort. My very first thought was that I have to feed them so I went to pick up some grass from the backyard. But when I came back in a couple of minutes, they were all gone. I could not figure out how did my pets manage to escape in a matter of minutes. Did my children’s books and folk tales lie to me that snails are super slow?
In my search of the snails, I passed by my grandfather who was cooking something in a giant pot by the kitchen entrance. It didn’t smell nice at all, so I was not interested. However, he stopped me and started praising his cooking invention without saying what on earth was boiling in the big mystical pot. According to him, this was the most exquisite food in the world and a quite popular one in France. I had no idea where he was getting at with that and I didn’t care about French people willing to pay crazy money for what was in there. I just wanted to find my snail-pets. But he insisted I try this magical dish. So, he lifted the lid and then, to my great horror I saw them. There they were, my snails boiling altogether in some messy French dish. I was curious, upset and also mad at the French people for giving my grandfather such crazy ideas but he did not notice my frustration. Instead, he picked up a snail, took the poor thing out of its shell, cleaned it, salted it, and handed it to me. And I, on the other hand, stared at it clueless what I should do with it.
None of my grandfather’s marketing strategies convinced me to try the snail. Eventually, he hinted that only grandma and he will enjoy this weird snail dinner.
For many years, they continued with the snail collection and cooking tradition. And my grandfather would always practice his salesman skills on me, insisting that I try the unholy snail dish. But this never happened. We just loved snails in very different ways and I was okay with that because I knew it could be worse. What if they committed to other unusual practices like catching frogs on the hot summer nights or having a thing for crispy crickets. Anyway, I did not want to give them more ideas so I just stayed quiet.
___________________________________________________________________
Vesselina Tasev is a Journalism and Mass Communication student at American University in Bulgaria. She loves writing short stories about her past experiences and her childhood.
