Tiny Exo-Skeletoned Fools

PT. 1

My coworker who got a new job gifted me an aquarium with a snail in it. I was like, “Okay, sweet, I just gotta keep this snail alive, no biggie.”

Suddenly there were two snails.

“Oh alright maybe the other one was too small for me to see before, they’re cute! I’ll name them!”

Two days later, five snails: “What the...”

Three days later, fifteen snails:

“Oh my freaking god what it happening”

I give one snail to another coworker with an aquarium.

Two days later: Her: “Uhhh there’s a new snail in my aquarium...”

Google Search: “SCIENCE, PLEASE EXTRAPOLATE ON YOUR BULLSHIT”

Website on snails: “Freshwater snails are often hermaphrodites. In other words, they carry both sperm and eggs and can reproduce without the help of another snail.”

HELP US WE ARE SCARED.

PT. 2

So, no matter how many times I gift snails to other people, just like Sand People, they always return in greater numbers. To my resignation and revulsion, right now I have about 40 aquatic snails in my tank. They won’t stop breeding and I’ve absolutely given up trying to preach chastity and abstinence to them.

They’re always on the move, always searching for that next morsel of poop and/or algae to lap up, or for another snail to fondle. Nature’s janitors; the job is never done. Sometimes though, I’ll notice one in a particular spot while I’m working, and then an hour later realize it’s still in the same spot. After another 30 minutes I’ll look closer and realize, “Oh, you tiny exo-skeletoned fool. You’ve gone and tried to fit into a crevice that was much too small for your stature, and now your shell is stuck between a rock and another rock.” Then I have to reach my fingers, or a pencil, or a spoon, into the water to pop the blundering idiot loose from his prison (within a prison).

In those times I always wonder, “what do the snails think just happened?” Do they know that if I hadn’t plucked them out of their predicament they would have slowly perished? Did they even know they had been stuck? When they see my finger, or my pencil, or my spoon coming nigh, do they think it’s a fatal asteroid on a collision course? The hand of God helping them in their time of need? Or do they think it’s any other regular natural force of their tiny ecosystem, like simply a weirdly strong water current that luckily turned in their favor?

When I accidentally flip them out of their bind so that they’re slowly spinning through the water at the mercy of the trajectory of my unwieldy spoon, are they thinking, “OH MY GOD THIS IS HOW I DIEEEEE” or “I’M FREEEEE!” or “dooby doo algae poop. Wonder if Carol is down for a fuck.”?

And now I’m wondering for myself: How many times have I been stuck without knowing I was stuck? How many times have I been stuck without knowing what was actually holding me back and then been released with just as much ignorance of my predicament? How many times have I known I was stuck and an imperceptible but intelligent force nudged me on my way? How often do I think I’m free to move about my life when I’m not, and how often do I think I’m stuck when I actually have the freedom to move? How many times have I thought I still belonged in a space that I actually outgrew long ago?

I guess I’ll never know for sure. So thanks to all the giant fingers, pencils, and spoons out there who have invisibly dislodged and flipped me slowly into the atmosphere, whispering into the synapses of the universe, “you’re free now. Be free, you molasses-moving fool.”

And thanks to all those who will.