Meet Nini and Lili

In my previous post, I mentioned that Nina found two river snails that she brought home as pets.  Well, we still have the snails, and they have become our pets.  Meet Nini and Lili.  They have been the objects of much attention and observation since we brought them home.  Before Sunday, I really knew very little about snails, so after realizing that the snails were indeed alive (after surviving the hike back to the car in Nina’s muddy hand, the car ride home in the cup holder, and the hours afterwards being carted around the yard in a bucket) we decided that we needed to learn a little about snails.  We learned that our snails have a very good sense of smell and like fruits, vegetables, and algae so we shredded some carrots, and cut up some apple and watermelon, and are learning what we think our snails like to eat. 

We also think our snails have just laid eggs.  The eggs are in the smaller container toward the front of the picture below.  The big snail (Nini) wasn’t very active in the first few days we had her, then we noticed that there were all these white things coming out of her.  Nice.  Anyway, after we looked online, we decided that Nini might have been laying her eggs.  After she finished that whole deal, she’s cruising around the container, eating food, etc.  The little one (Lili) was the active one at first, now since yesterday she has become very inactive and she is also emitting white stuff.  Lovely.  So, we’re scooping out the white stuff (what we think are the eggs), putting it in a different container, and if they hatch into snails we can release them back to the river. 

I felt kind of bad when I did some reading up about snails.  Evidently, they’re not real plentiful in Virginia rivers.  Now we have two of them in our house.  It left me with a little more of a conscience about making sure Nina and Lili survive because river snails can live to be up to five years old! 

Our Nina has been wanting a dog for so long, and a dog is coming at some point in the not so distant future I think, but for now we’re the proud owners of snails.  What little girl needs something furry and fluffy that’s glad to see her when she come home and curls up with her and give her love and attention when she can have a hard shelled, emotion-less slimy thing that emits white stuff? But just look at those happy smiles! We’ll accept our parent of the year nominations at any time!

Meet Nini…

Meet Lili…