SO I wrote this a week or so

ago. It has been crinkling up on the back side of an outline of a bracelet my sister asked me to make for her. I made it. How fun to hammer silver again. I was housesitting where I could use the studio. It was comforting and rewarding to play with metal.

Back to the other side: I turn on the radio. I am listening to Studs Terkel being interviewed on Speaking of Faith," a radio program on OPB. "How great. This is perfect for cleaning the garden mollusks."
So I rinse them in a colander and put some new cornmeal and crushed egg shells, fresh water into their small last residence. For the last 20 minutes of the interview, I sit with my metal strainer full of snails and slugs. Their gliding and sliding around the rim, over one another's shells is mesmerizing. One large snail reaches out to lean on a Limax Maximus slug. One tiny translucently young snail hitches a ride on larger one. Then a small slug wraps itself like a letter C around a shell traveling the narrow circular rail. So much roundness. Such social creatures. Could you be any less violent than them? At any minute they will climb to towering heights. Like in the Dr. Seuss book, Yertle the Turtle, they stack atop each other, but I don't get the feeling they are competing for the best view or to be the king<>queen of anything. They like each other and are uninhibited about their affectionate and curious nature. I am speaking for them, sort of paraphrasing the unheard word. If there is scientific data showing that they are truly merciless angry shell stacking assailants, don't hold back. I can synthesize and adjust for my fabrications.
"When you speak of death, it turns to life, you see, " Terkel is talking about his experiences writing his book, Will the Circle be Unbroken. No one speaks of the end, their end, without coloring the book of their life.

It makes me wonder why I can kill the snails and slugs; one friend lightly called me "miss mollusk murderess." I will not kill a chicken, squirrel, rabbit, dog,...and then eat it. I am imposing gradients of value onto forms of life. It is sobering and real. Not heavy and downer, but fills me with a peace that it is really that simple. We must eat. We must reduce our waste. We must allow for the food chain to exist and be responsible for our choices...sounds heavy after all. But when I hold a tiny newborn snail to Henrietta the chicken, she hammers her beak, "That's MINE!" I know she isn't feeling guilt about meeting her dietary survival needs. She needs to make eggs; snails have calciferous shells that she needs.
My conundrum when speaking to vegetarians and vegans is summed up in Horton Hears a Who: "a person's a person no matter how small." That Seuss wisdom is powerful. Just take out the person and add mollusk and you see, I know I am taking the life of something valuable. Maybe one day I'll stop eating them. For now I am grateful that they pirate my neighbor's vegetables and flowers while leaving trails that glisten me into the moment everywhere.