I’m so low on my list of things to blog about that this is what comes out of it.

But I bought a baby snail at that Petco place a few weeks ago… well, actually, I bought a lil’ ghost shrimp, and the snail came with it for free. Because, apparently, baby snails aren’t normally sold there, but I thought they looked cute and the worker just picked one out of the tank with her bare hands and dropped it in the plastic bag for me anyway.

So, actually, here’s a Petco life hack! Buy a 40 cent ghost shrimp and you can ask for a free baby snail to accompany it!

And so both my shrimp and baby snail were doing fine and, surprisingly, were still alive for a long time in my mini tank. Until, one day recently… my snail’s shell was found floating, empty, above the water.

Okay, I have no real knowledge of snail life, and I don’t even know brand of snail this one is… or, I guess, its species or whatever. So, right away, I assumed it was dead and got eaten by a fish or something. After all, my fishes are savages—I’ve seen the impregnated ones kill their comrades and eat their own newborns.

But then, I looked around the sides of bowl… and then I found this, like, tiny white blob on the top of the side of the glass. And then I was like… wait a sec… “okay, Google, what the hell is this?” 

And, spoiler alert, Google alerted me that this tiny white blob was probably actually a snail egg sack, and that some types of snails actually leave their shells to lay such things away from where fish can get them. Also, certain snails can reproduce completely on their own, as they are both female and male somehow at the same time.

Well, what do you know!

My baby snail is not so much of a baby as I had thought…

But, still, this is pretty neat, right? In about 3 or 4 more weeks, these little eggs are supposed to hatch. And then… good lord, they’ll be so many specks slithering around in the artificially colored plastic plants!

I’m honestly wondering now, though, whether or not queen mother snail will want her shell back or not. Because the fish keep poking it around like it’s a beach ball.

Here’s to new, healthy little lives!

-iKari