“We’re going to catch a Big one”, well, not actually a bear, rather a snail, but it had to be a Big one! That was the idea anyway, as I wanted to try an experiment to deter those monsterous creatures from devouring my hostas. I had heard that a mixture of Vaseline and salt smeared round the pot would put snails off, so this morning I stirred up a greasy mess and wiped it around my precious plant’s container. After I had finished, the thought crossed my mind that perhaps I should test the reliability of this method of defence (bit late in the day, but what the heck, it was bound to work, wasn’t it?) so I set off to find my biggest snail.

It seems that snails have more brains than I gave them credit for, and hide very successfully during the day. The only subject willing to take part (!) was a very small Girdled Snail, which I duly brought in and explained to it what was needed. All it had to do was to decide whether or not it would cross a Vaseline barrier smeared on the base of my washing up bowl (I use this for all my snail experiments, for instance, with the square of copper tape from which last year’s snail escaped immediately!). It took a while to think about it, while I chatted encouragingly, and eventually it moved, gliding slowly and carefully straight over my impregnable barrier.

So that’s that then – snail 1, me 0.

Sadly it’s back to the nightly torch and the overarm bowling down the bank!

(No snails were harmed during this experiment, I took it back to a lovely spot not too far from where I found it!)

Top left; The Problem, bottom right; My Answer, two, three, and four – what the snail did!