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Garden snail1/31/2024 ![]() In the hilly countryside, after rain, Cretan children gather snails flushed into the open by rainwater the creatures are kept alive for a few days on a cleansing diet of thyme and flour, then served up stewed or fried. The tradition continues on the island of Crete. The recipe he referred to? Cooked snails as a topping for porridge or bread. Archaeology corroborates him through shells found in ancient trash pits. “All the Greeks eat snails every day,” wrote Galen in the second century AD. If you suspect that a neighbor is poisoning snails-do not eat them. As invasivores, we encourage you to eat your snails from the wild-and to beware of snail poison. During the rainy season, they come out of hibernation and release most of their mucus onto the wood or straw. In a dark place, the snails are kept on dry straw or dry wood in a wire cage. Rearing snails for food is known as heliciculture. It’s best to use a cloth bag when collecting, so the snails can breathe. Snails will also emerge after a light rain. Snails are mostly nocturnal, so the most productive harvesting times are early in the evening or morning, when the yard is damp with dew. Invasivores and their families might follow suit.įrench cooks believe that snails gathered in the fall are tastiest, but according to author and farmer Gail Damerow, gardeners who collect snails in the spring, when damage can be greatest, find little difference in flavor. The French don’t consider the garden snail a nuisance at all, but a reason to spend time with the family, walking with buckets through their yards-even grassy fields-in pursuit of their prize. In French cuisine, the snail is known as petit gris, served in Escargot à la Bordelaise. In Lleida, a city of Catalonia, there’s a gastronomic festival, L’Aplec del Caragol, dedicated to the garden snail. (See, for example, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, by Elisabeth Tova Bailey, though this will not encourage you to eat said mollusks.) They’re considered fish by the Catholic Church, so are abstinence fare, permitted on meatless days during Lent. They’re a pest, a delicacy, and occasionally a pet. It’s on all continents but Antarctica, and on most big islands. In temperate zones, it has gone cosmopolitan. The brown snail has now become naturalized in climates much different from the Mediterranean where it evolved. (The introduction, in that case, didn’t stick.) Many areas have quarantines to prevent the import of snails in container-grown plants. ![]() ![]() Fish Commission, returning from a fact-finding (and fish-finding) trip to Europe, unofficially but deliberately brought back some garden snails, which he affixed to a garden wall in Massachusetts. Later in the century, a member of the U.S. The locals had no interest in the mollusk, but it adapted well to the Mediterranean climate of California, becoming a serious pest of crops and ornamentals, especially citrus groves and vineyards. The earliest recorded introduction in the United States was in the 1850s in California by a Frenchman, who saw the Gold Rush as lacking in escargot. Relished as edible where it’s native, the snail is regarded as a garden and agricultural pest where it has been introduced. Deliberately or accidentally, by the movement of plants and by hobbyists who collect snails, humans have spread it to temperate and subtropical zones around the world. The brown garden snail or European brown snail is native to the Mediterranean and western Europe as far north as Britain. Retracts into its shell when threatened or at rest. The body is soft and slimy, brownish gray. They typically feed when temperatures are between 40☏ and 70☏.ĭescription: Large globose shell, yellow or horn colored with chestnut spiral bands. Snails are mostly nocturnal but can come out on rainy days. Can be found feeding on nearly anything growing in a vegetable or flower garden. Habitat: Gardens and parks, coastal dunes, groves and hedges, between rocks. Invasive Range: In the United States and Canada, West Coast from California to British Columbia, most southeastern states, and along the East Coast north to New Jersey. Native Range: Areas bordering the Mediterranean and Black Seas, Western Europe, and Britain
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