‘What a horrid little snail!” my grandad exclaimed when he saw my new pet. In the past, I might have agreed with him. Snails were slow, moist and silent, making them boring and gross. Yet reading a history book about what the Romans did to them – getting them addicted to milk by lacing it with salt, fattening them up so much they couldn’t fit into their shells – left me horrified.
I vowed that I would right historical wrongs and be the valiant protector of the next snail I saw. I would give it a happy life with all the salt-free milk it could drink.
When my cousin tried to crush one, I picked it up and placed it in a jar I had filled with leaves and sticks. I put several air holes in the lid and filled a bottle cap with milk. What more could anyone want?
Bryan (a misspelt tribute to the Monty Python character) looked like most snails. He was an unremarkable brown-shelled, grey-skinned cornu aspersum (the kind you see in most UK gardens). We had had pets before, a bizarre lineup of animals that included stick insects, a piranha and a rabbit. My mother rightly put her foot down after years of feeding and cleaning them whenever my brother and I lost interest.
Bryan didn’t need expensive supplies from the pet shop or input from my parents. All he needed was someone to keep his plants, milk and water topped up and to wipe away the tendrils of poo that crept out from beneath his shell. I was in my first year of secondary school and life was lonely, mostly defined by bullying and isolation. Knowing Bryan was there when I got home provided comfort and meaning.
Two decades later, I recounted this to friends. Rather than seeing it as a moving tale of girl meets beast, they pointed out that trapping an animal in a confined space was not a healthy relationship. Words such as “codependent” and “snail-trafficking” were bandied around. I was forced to consider that the line between saviour and jailer had been slim.
Yet, writing this has made me realise that Bryan was also named after a boy whose family had moved away when I was 11, robbing me of my only friend. Adopting a snail had somehow filled the void.
When I came home one day to find Bryan black and shrivelled, I was inconsolable. I exorcised my grief by writing mawkish poems with lines such as: “The sky is black and the stars are falling.” One of them ended: “In paradise, you and me.”
I like to think that Bryan’s affection for me wasn’t totally milk-based, although I doubt he gave it much thought. Sorry about the poems, Bryan – at least you weren’t there to read them.