Snail ranching

This article originally appeared in the Sierra Vista Herald on 8 February 2015. 

I think I've finally found the retirement job I've been seeking. I currently work with horses for a living which is fun but comes with some attendant risks. My body has parts in it now that weren’t there when I was born. I have to carry a card from my doctor explaining why the metal detector goes off when I walk through the scanner at the airport. Not getting any younger, I’ve been pondering a follow-on career that has fewer risks of getting stomped to death by twelve hundred pound animals. Fortunately, in last week's Herald, I read a story about a new beauty trend involving snail mucus that may present an opportunity for me. People are paying up to two hundred dollars a pop to go to spas where attendants put snails on their faces. The snails leave slime trails on their skin which is supposed to make them look younger. Too bad horse snot doesn't do the same thing, or I'd have the face of a teenager. Naturally, the practice of putting snails on your face started in Japan, the home of such exciting concepts as eyeball licking and bagel heads.

Whenever something like this comes up, I have to wonder how the concept originated. I remember a gardening tip I learned in Germany for keeping snails off of your plants. You just put a jar of beer out in the garden, and the snails would crawl into it and drown (just about every activity in Germany involves beer—one of the things I love about that country). I figure the snail-face trend began when some Japanese guy drank too much Sapporo beer one night and passed out in his rock garden. When his angry wife came out the next morning and found him laying on the ground with beer-loving snails all over his face, he quickly made up the story about snail mucus beauty treatments. “Honest, honey, the mucus removes wrinkles and plumps up your skin,” he explained, selling the concept by looking straight into his wife’s eyes and slowly wiping a snail across his forehead. Thus, a new trend was born.

According to the article I read, one of the snail spas gets its specialized face-sliming snails from a French supplier. Of course, they do. A couple of French dudes living in Thailand imported some snails from home and started up a snail farm that now boasts 30,000 snails. Ha! Anything the Frenchies can do I can do better right here in the good ole USA. I have already begun planning for my new state-of-the-art snail ranch here at home that will boast some 60,000 head. Of course, American snails would be bigger and slimier than French snails and would soon drive their puny rivals from the market. My snails would be as big as raccoons and produce slime by the gallon. 

It seems to me that snail ranching is less likely to result in me being trampled to death by the stock. In fact, it is more likely that I would accidentally squash the snails. Many years ago, while walking down a rain-wet road in Sicily with a colleague, we heard something crunching beneath our boots. My companion suddenly remarked that the crunching sound was caused by our stepping on tiny snails that were on the pavement and that we needed to get off the road. “That’s just gravel,” I said, looking at the ground as I crunched along. “THOSE ARE SNAILS, YOU FIEND!” He screamed, not at all sounding like a hysterical lunatic. I got off the road. As they say, there’s no defense against crazy.

There are some logistic concerns with snail ranching, I suppose. For one, how do you fence them? I figure one strand of barbed wire an inch above the ground would do the trick. I’m hoping that snails don’t dig or jump. I could build a beer moat to keep them corralled, but that would probably just result in me finding one of my neighbors face-down in the ditch with the snails using his body as a bridge to freedom. “Viva la escargot!” they would cry as they stampeded for Mexico.  

I’m also wondering about the branding process. A brand would be needed to prevent snail rustling. I guess the shell would be a good place to put the brand. Of course, if you leave the brand on too long, you’d end up with lunch instead of stock. Every snail wrangler would be instructed to carry a stick of butter, just in case. 

So, years from now, if you see some cowboys driving a snail herd across the prairie, please come over for a chat. We won’t be moving very fast. I’ll be the guy with the baby face.