snail surprise

This afternoon, as Dylan was eating his sandwich, I brought in some lettuce from our garden for a lunch time salad. After a few minutes of chopping and slicing, I had a bowl full of vegetables we had grown ourselves: along with the lettuce, there were fat cucumbers, plump cherry tomatoes, snap peas bursting from their shells, and lush green beans. I garnished the salad with some craisins and walnuts. "Look, Dylan," I said proudly. "Almost everything in my lunch was grown right in our backyard."

Then, as I went to pick up my bowl, there it was: a snail, lounging casually on a piece of lettuce, its slimy body stretched out to its full length so that I might admire its dimensions. Somehow the Escargot Special seemed a little less appetizing than the salad I had envisioned. But it was a welcome bit of comic relief.