“Mum,” asked Kira, “can snails bite people?”
No, Jane reassured her, snails only eat leaves.
“Are you sure?” continued Kira, a little more urgently. Jane picks up on the tone of voice, asks, “Why darling, do you think they do?”
Snails can be a bit nippy, after all
“Well, this one’s biting me!” says Kira, holding up her arm and pointing to one of half a dozen garden snails stuck to it. After pulling it off, sure enough, there was a little round ring of reddened skin with a serrated and lightly broken circumference. Slightly painful, I have it on good authority, but no lasting damage.
From an early age Kira has had a fearless approach to our creepy-crawly neighbours, which was probably a more worrying tendency in East Africa than in Europe. Our picture shows her with a wall that was covered with 40 or 50 snails, rejoicing in a late and unseasonal rainfall in Nicosia.
For what it’s worth, Kira was never bitten by garden snails in Kenya; only a single Cypriot one. I read that the snail’s mouthpart which supposedly does the damage is the radula, a ribbon-like toothed digging tool, but that wouldn’t explain why Kira’s bite was circular in shape. Any answers out there?
